


Fires From The Ashes

by dexf, dimensionhoppingrose, Eva_aka_Pinkfox, FritoKAL, Haywire, Indiana_J, Kate, LadySeraph, lisabounce, Luciain, Rossi, Sephirajo, untune_the_sky, X_Project



Series: The Dark Phoenix Saga [2]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Project RPG
Genre: Demons, Explicit Language, Gen, Mass Death, Nazis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8291026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexf/pseuds/dexf, https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimensionhoppingrose/pseuds/dimensionhoppingrose, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eva_aka_Pinkfox/pseuds/Eva_aka_Pinkfox, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FritoKAL/pseuds/FritoKAL, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haywire/pseuds/Haywire, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indiana_J/pseuds/Indiana_J, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate/pseuds/Kate, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySeraph/pseuds/LadySeraph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisabounce/pseuds/lisabounce, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luciain/pseuds/Luciain, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rossi/pseuds/Rossi, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sephirajo/pseuds/Sephirajo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/untune_the_sky/pseuds/untune_the_sky, https://archiveofourown.org/users/X_Project/pseuds/X_Project
Summary: In the wake of the Muir disaster, various teams go out to find those responsible and discover instead Apocalypse has a new plan for world domination.   Part 2 of the The Dark Phoenix Saga. Plot by Dex.    Angelo Espinosa played by Kate, David North by Jills, Cecilia Reyes by Michael, Jessica Jones by Kale, Hope Abbott by Eva, Doug Ramsey by Twiller, Sarah Vale by Jeff, Susan Storm by AJ, Gabriel Cohuelo by Michael, Namor Mazur by Walks, Emma Frost by Amanda, Wanda Maximoff by Jen, Adrienne Frost by Mon, Topaz by Sam, William Kaplan by Matt, Amanda Sefton by Rossi, Ororo Munroe by Erin, Marie-Ange Colbert by Frito, Callisto by Morag, Rachel Kinross-Dayspring by Jills, Carmilla Black by Jo, Wade Wilson by Cai, Remy LeBeau by Dex, Artie Maddicks by L, Jubilation Lee by Seraph, Arthur Centino by Walks, Scott Summers by AJ, Paige Guthrie by Aisy and Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix by Mack





	1. Fires From The Ashes - Log 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the losses on Muir, the X-Men and other teams discuss the next steps.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

There was a sense of disbelief that had taken over the Mansion after Magneto's -- and everyone else's -- death. Jean was missing, hundreds were dead and Muir Island itself was no more. People were dealing with the injured, the news channels were blaring 24/7, and it was impossible to ignore the magnitude of what had happened.

It was time for action, but before that -- they needed to know what they were up against. 

So here they were in the War Room, leaders of X-Force and X-Corps, to discuss what the next steps should be. This wasn't going to be an easy meeting by any means, but they needed to put aside what had happened at Muir and focus on the next steps forward.

Easier said than done - Charles' face was somber, set with new lines of care and grief that hadn't been there even the day before. "Thank you for coming," he said once everyone had taken seats in his office. "You have all been briefed on what happened at Muir Island; we need to determine what our next steps are."

Scott stared down at his hands, he still couldn't believe it. So many of the X-men he'd trained and become friends with, who had stuck through it with them despite everything were gone and Jean had vanished too. They'd had bad missions before, and knew dying was part of the job, but there had never been a mission like this before. Scott's mind shied away from dwelling on that. If he spent too long thinking about it then he was sure he'd never make it out of the abyss of his thoughts so he straightened up in his chair and looked at Charles, "We need more information," he stated, "None of us knows what's going on here so we're flying blind and that's not going to end well."

"News of that magnitude should not have gone unnoticed." Ororo stopped the litany of self-flagellation and cursing that had been running through her head since the events at Muir had taken place. They could point fingers and place blame later; for now, Charles was right. They needed to move forward. "But regardless of that, it surely will have left traces of activity that can be traced - retroactively, if nothing else. That should allow us to put together a more complete picture."

"De Dark Riders are de rogue factor here. Magneto might have been willing to take Muir hostage, even threatened dem wit' de bomb but de way it was used... Remy willing to bet he was mad enough to make a bad deal, and de Dark Riders used him to eliminate a threat. But dey not empire builders either. So, de question is who are de Dark Riders taking orders from now?" Remy had shutdown emotionally at the news of Muir. Instead, he'd gone operational, pushing everything to one side so he could focus without his own dark Gambit tendencies clawing for control. "We have some hits of dere activity in Africa over de last year. Angelo, what 'bout you people? Remy knows merc hunting isn't normally dere thing, but rumours tend to spread."

Angelo had been sitting quietly in his place at the table, not contributing so far, but quiet didn't mean inattentive. He nodded.

"It's only been rumours, friend of friend stories, but there have been a few things. From Egypt, last time, but nobody admits they've talked to them or seems to know what they're doing. I put it down to urban legends."

"Egypt." Charles frowned. "Professor Farouk disappeared in Egypt as well, I recall. It may just be a coincidence, but perhaps related." He looked to Scott. "The X-Men who... survived the mission will need time to recuperate. I dislike the need, but we may need to ask some of the New Mutants to assist in the research we will need to conduct."

Scott stared at Charles in shock before bowing his head, “It’s not supposed to get to this," he noted quietly. "But needs must when the devil drives," Scott sighed and looked up, "Volunteers only," he insisted, "I don't think it's a coincidence, but we do need to be careful, someone that could just make him vanish...isn't someone we want to run into unprepared."

"Dere's a lot of Egypt. We have four separate encounters south of de Aswan alone." Remy rubbed his eyes. "You've got some students dat have worked wit' Doug before. If we link dem up, wit our existing intel and Farouk's research, dey might be able to narrow down some of de locations. If Angelo's people work some of de places dat dey've been, dere might be some additional clues dat help guide them. If we can get some of de more likely spots, 'Ro and I can take teams to check dem out."

"We need to scour for more information as well as have feet on the ground," Ororo murmured, glancing at Remy with a hint of concern leaking into her expression momentarily. "As loathe as I am to suggest it, the Hellfire Club will have information we do not or cannot discover easily on our own. Wanda could infiltrate, with a team, and scour their archives - what they find could give us valuable information on these Dark Riders."

"I'll take some people to Cairo", Angelo said quietly. "It'll be a start; at least, maybe we can get somebody to talk a little bit more."

"It's a start," Scott agreed, "Just be careful out there Angelo." The X-man sat up in his chair and winced, "I'm not in any state to head to Africa, but someone needs to head to Aswan where the sightings were, if there have been so many sightings in the area chances are they're operating somewhere nearby."

Aswan. It all came back to Egypt. "I will go," Ororo murmured. "My contacts may be of use there."

"It appears, then, that we have a plan." Somehow, Charles didn't sound as decisive as he usually did in such situations. "Scott, I'll leave it to you to arrange the specifics with the others while I talk to the students about what is needed of them." He looked over at Remy, Ororo and Angelo. "Thank you. It has been a terrible day, but perhaps some good may come of it."


	2. Fires From The Ashes - Log 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angelo leads a group to Africa to investigate the last spotting of the Dark Riders.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

The meeting with Charles had helped clarify a few things, but the team still needed to come up with their own individual plan. The Dark Riders were at Muir Island -- of that, there was no doubt. But what was their role? Why did they come out now? 

The only way to get that information was to go to the last known location, Cairo, Egypt and start from the bottom: talking to the people around, and determining what needed to happen. It would take everyone's efforts to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The others were relying on them.

"Hope", Angelo said curtly - he'd barely had any warmth in him since the events at Muir, shutting down all emotions hard for better functioning. "You're good with people; go charm them but page in every hour. North, Doc Reyes, you don't need me to tell you what to do. Jessica, you're with me."

"Yes, sir." Hope drew a thin cotton scarf from her bag before draping it around her head and stepping from behind the pillar as she made way from the shadowed corner they had gathered. Taking in the wide variety of small shops in the vicinity, she made her way to what seemed to be the busiest or most popular shop and started browsing through the variety of knickknacks on offer.

Several of the Dark Riders had a distinctive appearance. With some luck she would be able to gather some information if strange figures had been around... 

Cecilia watched Angelo as she adjusted the light sweater she'd brought to cover her shoulder. She'd never seen him so tense, although it wasn't like she was the picture of calm herself. The news of Matt's death had hit her particularly hard, but having a task to focus on was keeping her together.

"Okay," she finally said, mostly to prepare herself. "Let's go talk to the people."

North offered her his arm to grasp at the elbow, his expression a picture of serenity in comparison to the storms lurking beneath his companion’s constructed façades. He said nothing of it though, merely patted the doctor’s hand in a vague gesture of comfort. “Pick a spot first.” 

In the meantime, the spy’s gaze swept the area behind the dark lenses of his shades, covertly tracking Hope as she flitted towards the stores. 

Jessica cringed a bit at the sharp efficiency with which Angelo guided his troops. She guessed that's what they were now. Soldiers. If not, she certainly felt as though she had been drafted. Letting out a slight sigh, she turned to Angelo with a small smile. 

"Think while Hope talks nice to the everyday folks, we should hit up some of the other, seedier places? You know, where a little more...force may be necessary? Trying to pick your brain here Angelo, give me something to work with." She asked, crossing her arms over her chest. She'd never done something like this. Tried to track down some strange ass folks with a group of equally strange ass folks, though ones that were decidedly nicer than the first ones. 

"That's the plan", he said with a nod. "Force might be necessary, but sometimes you get just as far with looking like you're ready for force. I grew up in places like that..."

"Yes, well, that sounds like a plan." Cecilia said half-heartedly. She was scanning the area much as Hope had, and she finally settled on the line of people outside what she assumed to be a pharmacy. "Enjoy pretending to bash heads in."

That came out more sardonic than she'd intended, so she gently patted Angelo on the back. "Be careful." And with that, she headed toward the store, nodding at Hope as she passed.

"Alright boss man, let's find the nearest dive. I assume you'll be playing bad cop?" Jessica asked. Joking was the best way to hide the fear that flooded her. From what she understood, these Dark Riders were some serious shit. And, well, her training with Rogue aside, she wasn't really ready for all this. She turned to look at Angelo, a man she had just met a short while ago, and she wondered just what had happened to make him so...distant. She shook herself and let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. She needed to trust him. Otherwise, she'd never be able to make it through this.

"I can do that", he said with the faintest smile. "To the patrons, anyway. Maybe you could be nice to the wait staff?" They probably wouldn't be used to many people being nice to them.

"Good cop? I'm all over it. Now, let's get to it." Jessica answered with a faint smile of her own. 

"Right then." And he turned away from the tourist quarter, towards the places tourists would be quietly told not to go.

Jessica sighed internally as she spoke to yet another patron of the dive that they had found themselves in. She'd was getting very tired of people attempting to touch her inappropriately and was within seconds of breaking some fingers if she didn't find out anything soon. At Angelo's suggestion, she'd been talking up the wait staff, hoping to find out something that could help them. 

"You're saying nothing...unusual has gone on, then? No big jobs?" She asked. The man she was speaking too gave her a wide eyed look before he spoke. 

"This place is full of big jobs miss, and I don't think I like you asking." The man replied. Jessica had to stop herself from tearing her hair out in frustration. Instead, she grabbed the man's right hand in her own and pulled herself toward him. Her lips paused next to his ear, her hair falling to provide cover for her words. She'd told Angelo she was good cop, but that hadn't gotten her anywhere. "Alright, look. I'm going to ask you one more time. Has anything out of the ordinary for you sleazebags happened recently? I'm asking you nicely and politely. Refuse to answer and you're going to have to explain to your bosses how you can do your job with a pulverized hand. Get it?" She asked, applying just the slightest bit of her strength to the man's hand. He hissed in pain, and his lips loosened immediately. 

"No, please!" He begged. "I-I heard something about someone taking writings. One's written in the old tongue. I-I don't know from where or when exactly. Please, that's all I know." He answered. Jessica smirked and released the man. He scuttled away from her at an astonishing speed, and Jessica quickly began to look around for Angelo. 'Stealing writings? Is that really what the big baddies are after? If it's strange to these sleazebags, it might be worth running by Angelo.' She thought as she made her way across the dive toward her fellow mutant. 

Angelo had watched this with some amusement from across the room, where he'd been having better luck with one of the local drunks. Only too willing to talk, the man had spilled every detail he'd heard about bizarre strangers in the district.

"That looked satisfying."

Jessica gave a small smile as she brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face.  
"It was. This whole shitstorm must really be starting to get to me. Let's do me a favor and forget about that skeeze. What'd you find out?" Jessica asked. 

"My friend here", he patted the man's arm, "thinks he might have seen the people we're looking for, and they raided some kind of museum. Really old books and engravings, like a thousand years old."

Jessica nodded. 

"Your friend might be right. The skeezy waiter told me someone took some old writings, written in a language no one uses anymore. Think we should grab the others and check it out?" She asked. 

"Sounds like a plan. What they wanted probably isn't there anymore, if it was, but we might get an idea what they're interested in."

Meanwhile, in another section of the town, Hope, North and Cecilia had been busy in their own right.

Hope saw the others move from their sheltered spot from the corner of her eyes, never pausing once as she held up various knickknacks and enthusiastically chattered at the shopkeeper all the wonders Egypt had to offer. Her eyes never quite showed the smile that she had pasted on her face... Matt was gone... and not just him...Dr. Grey vanished... and so many injured. 

"I heard something about a movie shooting or a theater play nearby? People said they had seen characters in their costumes on the street! I do so love the theater!" At the shop keeper's disappointing response, she quickly paid for a small scarab medallion and left the shop, making way to the next one, once more pulling the smile on her face. From porcelain to ivory to steel...

Wary that Hope’s overly cheerful act and the fact that she was a lone white girl in the marketplace would draw unwanted attention to her, North kept Hope in his line of sight as he joined the queue to the pharmacy with Cecilia. He stood slightly out of line to sweep and catalogue the people in the queue, brows arching over the rim of his shades as a heavily bandaged man joined the line behind them.

“Whoa, dude. You all right? You look like someone dropped a camel on you.”

The man crossed his arms with a wince, which deepened into a frown. "I am fine," he said gruffly, taking a step away from North to put some distance between them.

Cecilia turned around to face him. "I'm sure you are, but what's under the bandages? I'm a doctor - let me take a look."

"No," he said curtly. "There was —" He glanced at a younger man next to him and muttered some words in Arabic. "It is glass. I got cut."

"Okay." The doctor just nodded, because that was hardly helpful. She glanced up at North and shrugged then started rifling around in the bag slung over her shoulder. "Can you tell me where?"

Both the man and his companion looked dubiously at them, uncertainty clear in their expressions. The hushed conversation in Arabic that followed was far too quick for North to keep up with his smattering of knowledge of the language. So he offered up a wry look and an amused twist of his lips. 

"You may as well let her look, man," he said. "She's very stubborn. I mean, I can take the woman out of the hospital but not the doctor out of the woman." 

"It's true," Cecilia shrugged apologetically, taking one hand from her bag and clapping North on the back a little more forcefully than she'd intended. "Old, strong-willed, highly-educated me. With my three degrees and years of experience." She went back to searching.

The man appraised Cecilia, frowning slightly before looking at North and shrugging. "Okay," he said. He turned his head slightly to his friend, saying something that seemed terse in Arabic. The other man started to unwrap the bandages.

As he peeled off the last one, he gasped, causing an otherwise-preoccupied Cecilia to look up. "Holy shit." His gashes were long, and they were numerous. One looked particularly deep - deeper than the kinds of lacerations she'd have expected from a broken window. "How - how did this happen?" She finally located the tube of Neosporin for which she'd been searching and pulled out of her bag. She unscrewed the cap and gestured to his arm. "May I?"

The man hesitated, but angled the largest of his wounds towards her. "Big explosion at work," he said finally with a heavy frown. "This is from window glass." 

"Crazy people," his companion added, accent more pronounced in his speech, made more emphatic by an eye roll and a vaguely exasperated hand gesture towards the heavens. 

"Where?" North asked, ignoring the way the injured fellow's head snapped to the side to glare at his friend. "Are there more people injured? Shouldn't your employers have sent you to the hospital instead?"

The man snorted. "Hospital?" He winced and pulled his arm back as Cecilia began applying the antibiotic to his wounds. 

"Sorry, sorry." The doctor threw a hand up in apology. "Might sting a little. I forget," The man moved her arm back toward her, muttering what she had to assume were some curses in Arabic. Rather than cursing back, she forced a smile onto her face, trying to look the very picture of medical service. "You were saying. What's wrong with Cairo hospitals?"

"Nothing's wrong," the injured man said, now looking at North. The disdain on his face was all too clear. "They ask questions, and it takes too long. And it's expensive. The pharmacy here, they just ask what's wrong; they give you what you need."

"Sure," his friend scoffed and shook his head. "And you don't have to tell them about the men with the hoods who ransacked your—."

The injured man drew his arm away from Cecilia so he could jab the other man's breastbone with his elbow.

North arched an eyebrow at them. "Oh-kay..." 

"Ignore him," he said stiffly.”Some things are better not knowing about." 

His friend huffed, looking slightly insulted and launched into a whole string of Arabic. North traded glances with Cecilia.

Cecilia shrugged at North. They both should have brushed up on her Arabic. She reached for the man's arm, pulling it back toward her with a bit more force than necessary. "Listen - see how it's red around here?" She glanced up at him, then back at the arm. "You need to keep an eye on that, because it could get infected.”If you start to see fluid or you get a fever, go to a doctor."

The man responded with a curt nod, then waved his free hand as if to tell Cecilia to get on with it. She dropped the Neosporin back in her bag and pulled out new bandages. "You know," she said quite casually, "if something exploded - something big, I mean, there could be other people who need help. Treatment. I'd hate to think they didn't get the help they needed because you didn't tell me where they are." She shrugged as she worked. "Wouldn't want that to cause any rifts either." Her eyes darted toward his friend. "You know, if they found out."

The man scowled at her. "They will be f—"

"Oh, shut up, Gamal." His friend, apparently relishing the opportunity to win this argument, rolled his eyes. "I can tell you where, but it's better to draw a map, I think. You two, you will get lost."

The injured man, now shooting death daggers at her, frowned. "Finish up," he commanded Cecilia.

"Almost done," she smiled, then nodded at both men. "Thank you. I appreciate it" 

Suddenly, North stiffened, head swiveling to the side as he peered through the marketplace in search of something. Or someone 

"Hey, Hon? I think our little troublemaker has wandered a bit too far. You do your thing I'm gonna go get her, 'kay?"

The German man left with squeeze to her shoulder, fingers brushing through the ends of her hair in a subtle show of affection that doubled up as reassurance as he left Cecilia to wrap up the conversation while he weaved quickly through the crowds towards the early stirrings of a potential commotion. 

This guy had looked at Hope suspiciously as soon as she inquired about theater shows or movie sets. Clearly, she had struck somewhat closer to home here. "I am so sorry, sir... Did I ask something strange?" She lowered her eyes just a bit, but still enough to keep him in sight. 

"What do you know about this, girl?" The man asked, his dark eyes shimmering angrily. 

She quickly sidestepped as he reached for her. "Nothing much, sir. Only that I think you must have crossed paths with them and did not enjoy the encounter very much, so to speak." Hope replied as she stepped to the side again. This was not quite going the way she had hoped...

A heavy hand landed on her shoulder, which may have caused her to tense defensively until she looked up into North's face. "What did I say about staying close, kid?" He asked, tone almost scolding, but mostly fondly exasperated. She could not have missed the way he had put himself between the man and herself -- and neither had the man, judging from the look that passed across his angry features. "And about annoying the locals?"

Hope folded her arms and glanced over at the German man. "I think someone else already did the annoying for me." She stepped around North, reaching out soothingly with a hand, though she did not touch the man in regards to the cultural traditions of where she was. "It seems to me like they hurt someone or something he cared about, just like they did with us." And putting him on the same plane as they were, Hope hoped. 

North said nothing, merely crossed his arms and watched the upset man for further signs of violence. But at this moment, despite the way his body was still angled to make a grab at her, the shopkeeper seemed to have stopped short, blinking rapidly as though he were still trying to understand her words.

"My friend and I..." Hope indicated North with a gesture. "... We are hoping to bring these men to justice. But to do that we do need to find them and everything you can tell us will help." The man seemed to relax a little further and Hope glanced over at North, knowing he would know far better which info was best to get. 

"Just tell us what is wrong," North said easily, though the hardness in his eyes was anything but. "Who wronged you and where we may find them."

The shopkeeper's continued hesitance was obvious, more so than Cecilia's patient had been. But when North kept to his silence and drew Hope back in closer to his side, he relaxed and curled in on himself in defeat, moving back into the shade of his shop.

"My sister's husband, he was a scholar. He worked at this place that keeps old writings. I don't know," he made a vague, abortive gesture on the air. "Complicated. But very boring. Yesterday, bad men attacked. Killed him. I don't know," he repeated, looking lost. "They say the men looked like monsters. Out of movie or film." He nodded at Hope.

North hummed thoughtfully, then requested pen and paper on which he redrew the map Gamal's friend had drawn from memory. "At this place?"

"Yes, yes," the shopkeeper nodded fervently, speaking its name in Arabic a couple of times.

Glancing at North, Hope stepped forward once more. It seemed like they had the information they needed or at least confirmation of earlier information. "Please, convey our regrets to your sister for her loss and reassure her we will do what we can to gain justice for her husband."

"You mean that you will..." 

She quickly interrupted the man.”Please sir, you do not have to concern yourself with that. Your sister is far more important here..." 

North's face remained impassive, hiding his discomfort at having revealed too much to the man; made too many promises. Instead, he reached out and clapped a solid palm on the man's shoulder, giving it a sharp squeeze that could have been comfort or warning, no one but him could tell. 

"Just make sure you keep this meeting to yourself," he said, not unkindly. "Or we may not be able to help at all."

He waited for the uncertain nod of reply and quelled the shopkeeper's fumbling thanks with a pointed look before spinning on his heel and ushering Hope away. "He'll last maybe a day or so. If we're lucky. We need to move quickly," he said gruffly. Sometimes when you tell a person too much, they became both a liability and a target themselves. But North said nothing else, and waved at Cecilia as she approached.


	3. Fires From The Ashes - Log 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug leads a hacking mission to pull up more information.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

There were no other words for it — the conference room at the Brownstone had been overtaken by wires, computers, cell phones, take out boxes, and other gear which only a certain few would know the name of — most of it illegal and all of it past the bleeding edge of what the average person had access to. 

As usual, the task was simple. Provide everything, and have it all yesterday. Par for the course, and it had been ever since the first day Pete Wisdom demanded the moon on a stick. Doug’s team, consisting of Namor, Sue, Gabriel and Sarah were tasked with the following: find information, and figure out what the hell was going on. 

He’d been given Sarah Vale and Sue Storm. Having his quasi-minion there was helpful, because she had worked with him enough already to anticipate some of the things he would need. And his issues with technopaths aside, having Sarah Vale to sweet-talk any systems would be helpful. 

Gabriel and Namor were seeming mismatches to the ‘hack squad’, but they had a part to play as well. “I need passwords, and I need lots of them,” Doug explained. “Contrary to what Mission: Impossible suggested, off-grid systems behind multiply redundant security isn’t very useful. Basically, the more layers of security you put on top, the harder it becomes to actually -use- the information you’re securing. So we don’t need to hijack a fire engine, sorry.” 

Doug was squeezing a ball in one hand, trying to build back up strength in the arm that had been injured when he’d been shot. Again. But he wasn’t thinking about that either. “So we can do it from here, but to do that we need to get past some of the nastiest firewalls and tech out there. Brute force isn’t going to work, so we attack the weakest link - the human element.” 

He pushed a large box full of anonymous-looking cell phones toward Namor and Gabriel. “You’re from IT, security, internal affairs, whatever. Sue’s job is to make it look like the calls are coming from an internal extension. After that, the job is to get them to give up access to systems.” He indicated a list on the whiteboard at one end of the room — passwords, hostnames, all the pieces of information that would be useful. “And then Sarah and I go to work.” 

Namor nodded respectfully, and though his eyes were focused on the box on the table, his agitation manifested in playing with the cuffs of his shirt. The mismatched pair — each having previously raised their own objections to the powers that be why this group would not really benefit from their individual skillsets — has already gotten a briefing about the importance of leg work, teams, and social engineering. 

The Attilani took the box from where it has been shoved and placed it evenly between himself and Gabriel. “Yessir. Simple enough.” 

“Forgive me for not understanding the first half of any of that, but to be clear: You want me to lie on the phone?” Gabriel tried to catch Namor’s eye and failed, so instead he settled for a smirk. “Yeah, no, I think I’ve got a unique skill set for that.” He reached into the box and picked up an old phone, then glanced toward the techno-babblers. “And you guys are gonna... what, exactly?” 

“We,” she pointed to herself and Doug, “get to do the heavy lifting. Well, not, like actual heavy lifting, because I’d suck at that.” Sarah then quickly backpedaled, pointing at Doug again. “I mean, Doug can probably do heavy lifting, I can’t though, because, y’know. No muscles.” She lifted her arms to show the lack of same. “But up here, aha, I’m good.” Tapping her forehead, Sarah gestured to her and Doug once again. “We’re good. Got it?” Probably not but she was going to shut up right about now. 

“Then we go cracking every bit of encryption we can, and searching for every last bit of data on those weird writings.” Doug cocked his head at Sue. “You good?” 

Sue grinned and nodded, “I’ve got the easy job, I just have to crack and fool the phone networks. Well not easy per se but you guys have the hard part. I’ve got this, don’t worry,” she assured her mentor, “They’ll have no idea where we’re coming from, “You guys ready?” she asked glancing over at Namor and Gabriel. 

“Yeah, let’s do this.” Gabriel was trying not to tap his foot impatiently. Being able to fast forward through life had made him impatient for exposition. He glanced at the burner in his hand, grabbed the Diet Coke he’d been drinking and plopped down onto a new chair. “Not that it really matters,” he said, his eyes on the whiteboard as he started dialing numbers, “but nobody’s really told me what we’re looking for.” 

By this point Namor had already organized the remaining burner phones in a neat grid on the table. He pointedly gestured toward a tablet on which he had taken notes in anticipation of any potential lapse in focus. “As Mr. Ramsey mentioned not two minutes ago, we are conning passwords and usernames for these levels of security out of unsuspecting, everyday employees. I am confident in my ability to strong-arm these items, but you may prefer a softer approach.” 

He let the judgment hang there for a second before swiping and addressing the room more directly. “I have already made a spreadsheet.” 

“Yes, thanks,” Gabriel said evenly, keeping from rolling his eyes. He turned his head to Namor and tried not to smirk. “You performed so admirably the last time we competed, that this posturing is totally warranted. You macho man, you.” 

He looked back at Doug and Sarah, drumming his fingers on the table impatiently. “I’m asking about the long game.” 

“Girls, girls, you’re both pretty,” Doug said with a pointed look. Competition wasn’t on the menu, cooperation was. 

“Big picture, we’re after intel.” Obvious answer was obvious, but he elaborated. “We need to know anything and everything about those missing writings, what the inimitable Christians In Action know, who we can potentially go looking for, all of that.” 

“Got it,” Gabriel nodded. He stifled his retort, because condescending or not, Doug had a point. Not the time. He put the phone to his ear. “It’s ringing.” 

Sue swung her seat around to face the computer in front of her, her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as she transferred her focus onto the keyboard. She may not have been as good at hacking as Doug and Sarah, but she was more than good enough to handle this and was determined not to let her mentor down. “You’re good,” she whispered giving Gabriel and Namor a thumbs up, “they think you’re from security.” 

Sarah flashed two thumbs up as well, a big grin on her face. She mouthed the words ‘you’ve got this!’ and tried her best to stay silent. While it was certainly a serious situation to say the least, it was still kind of exciting to be doing things like this, especially with a team of sorts. It made her feel more useful than normal, which reminded her to get back to work already and she turned to face her catching, waiting and listening for Gabe to work his magic. 

His magic took two pizzas, eight cartons of Chinese, and frequent caffeine breaks, but the previously empty whiteboard was now a treasure trove of confidential information that would certainly get a few people fired. 

The groups had worked in tandem throughout the evening as new problems and encryption levels arose. One solution from the hacksquad, some clever cover by Sue, and applied technomagic from Sarah and Doug ensured that unnamed peons in Virginia would not lose their jobs in vain. Well, for the Xavier’s crew at least. 

“I am afraid you must not have heard me,” Namor commanded icily without an accent as he talked to one last security peon handed off from Gabriel and Sue’s manipulations, “This is not a choice. Emergency measures have been called. Good. Good. You are a service to your country.” 

There was a few disgruntled mumbles, but the last bit of needed information pinged merrily on Sarah’s machine. The Attlani hung up the phone a little sourly. He sighed, his voice returning back to its normal European cadence. 

“Well. I sincerely hope this history lesson is worth it.” 

"We'll make it worth it, don't worry!" Sarah exclaimed, tapping away at her computer as soon as the last piece of information arrived. "Once we put all of these pieces together, we should, uh." She stopped typing and frowned at her screen, scratching her head. "I mean, it should all make sense then, only... huh." Turning to Doug, Sarah tapped her screen lightly and raised her eyebrows as she spoke. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing here too?" 

Doug was impressed that Sarah had seen the pattern, even if she didn't necessarily understand what it meant. He put the display up on a screen on the far wall, so that the others could see what they were looking at. "Data markers, here, here, and here," he said, using a laser pointer to indicate the places he meant. "Means the intel was never put up for sale. Which means the thieves wanted it for themselves, not for how much money it could make them." He frowned. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that." 

Sue leaned back in her chair as she stared at the board, a pen idly rotating in her fingers. "Me neither," she agreed, "If they're not even trying to hide it then they have to be sure that no-one else can stop them. That kind of confidence doesn't bode well for us," especially given the complexity of the operation they'd run. "All we know is it's something to do with this guy, ' En Sabah Nur'." 

"Whatever that means." Gabriel grabbed a slice of pizza that had long gone cold. He kicked his feet onto the conference table. "En Sabah Nur," he repeated after a bite. "No way that's not a codename or something." 

Doug tapped at his lips, his frown deepening. "Best translation I've got is Arabic - 'the morning star'. Either someone fancies themselves as Lucifer, or...I don't even know. The timing is all wrong on these writings - Arabic wasn't even extant as a language when these things were supposed to be written. It should be more like Coptic, or Aramaic. Something does -not- add up here." 

This vague statement hung in the air without answer for a few ponderous seconds before Namor chose to cut the tension with a polite clearing of the throat. "I suggest we confer with our colleagues in other locations instead of wallowing in What May Bes and Unhelpful Theories. If this is that old," and he nodded toward Doug, "then there may be nothing digital to fill in the gaps. No one has sold this, and it is incomplete. We need a next step. Our advantage is numbers." 

His gaze, glass-edge sharp, was now fully on Doug. "Unless you have any better ideas, of course."


	4. Fires From The Ashes - Log 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma leads a team to the London Hellfire Club to access their records.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

It was only through special permission that the team was allowed into the archives. People were not generally allowed access, but it was clear to all involved that this was a necessity. Because of that, the team was given leave to research the many texts in the library, permission given by the Red Queen herself. 

They'd been given a task -- to research the name En Sabah Nur. It was hoped that the name alone would help provide information, a plan, anything really, that would help them deal with the situation.

Wanda was grateful indeed, not only because of sheer necessity, but also because she knew a little something about opening protected archives to others. A few months ago, or even weeks, and gaining entry would have been a laughable attempt but times certainly had changed and not for the better. "Thank you," she said, turned toward the Red Queen. She turned her head at the others standing in the archives. "We are looking for anything that might bring us even the smallest amount of information. Even if it appears it might be nothing."

She pointed to a cleared table. "That will be our gathering spot of the information we find." If they were so lucky as to find enough to fill a table. "Re-shelve non-related data so as not to confuse the matter. Are there any texts or materials that will need to be translated to English?" Wanda's question was directed back towards the former Red Rook.

Jane Hampshire gave Wanda an amused smirk. "Most of them, I'd imagine. Including the ones ostensibly in English." The new Red Queen had worked in and around this archive most of her life, read a dozen of the dead languages the codices and texts were in. She had initially been slow to open up access, but it was thanks to the people here that she was the Red Queen, and not on the outside looking in of a major coup. "However, I've taken the liberty of putting together some notes and information in our databases around the name you spoke of. It should give you a strong starting point."

Adrienne huffed out a sigh and touched the list so she could Read it and wouldn't have to look at it again. "Have I mentioned today how much I hate my mutation?" she muttered to no one in particular. She'd said it multiple times since being asked to come on this task and was far beyond the point of actually wanting an answer. Reading and researching were not on her list of favourite things, but because of the nature of her powers she was quite useful in an archive and knew the stakes were too high for her to refuse to do this. But that didn't mean she wasn't dreading the headaches she'd probably have for weeks. "I've got a couple Latin dictionaries rattling around up here somewhere," she announced, pointing to her head, "So I'll take the stuff on this list in Latin and see if I can muddle through it."

Topaz cast an uneasy look around the room. Books usually put her at ease, but the current circumstances and the overwhelming feeling of wrong negated that. "I can start in the back," she offered quietly. "Work my way up." She couldn't do much, but she could do research with the best of them.

"Take Billy with you," Amanda replied, just as quietly. The less attention the Hellfire Club - any Hellfire Club - put on her students, the better for them. "Farouk always talked about En-Sabah-Nur coming from Egypt, so focus around there for now and I'll come join you in a bit." A bit louder, she added, for the Red Queen's sake: "I've studied Arabic, so there's one less language we need translated." She ignored the stab of grief at the memory of just who had taught her Arabic - there would be time for feelings later. Personal wasn't the same as important.

"I know a bit of Hebrew," Billy started to offer, when he recalled something Marie-Ange had said once, years back. "If you are ever stuck in a foreign country where you need to speak the language and you find yourself in need of being fluent, you should cheat." "Well, actually," he said, "I'm pretty good at it, and that--ah, ability--helps with some other older languages." He gave Amanda a pointed look. "If you find anything no one else can read, maybe you can help me...'translate.'"

Emma glanced at the Red Queen. "I know it violates a number of Club protocols, but in the circumstances, I wonder if I could press you for assistance, if I require it." She let her request echo in Jane's mind, a soft strum of telepathy across what Emma tended to describe as a mind's dictionaries. "Time, in this case, is of the essence. If I can read some of the more obscure texts quickly, well... Let's just say your help would be appreciated." Emma's tone didn't vary from the calmest courtesy, nor did she use her telepathy again, but somehow the message about what she would do, if the Red Queen's help was not voluntarily forthcoming, was abundantly clear. 

"A request, queen to queen?" Jane arched a brow at her. "I would not turn down a future favour from the White Court easily. Very well. Let us... begin."

***

It was slow going but they were making progress. After some time, it was necessary to re-group and come together to share information.

Amanda rubbed her eyes and set the book she'd been skimming through down on the table they'd eventually gathered around. "So, it's official. We have a 2000 year old crazy bloke ranting about space gods."

Adrienne stopped the repeated thumping of her forehead against the desk and looked up, bleary-eyed, at Amanda. "Judgey, race-wiping-out-y space gods," she elaborated pointedly before she put her head back on the desk, mentally sifting through more information she'd gathered with her powers but hadn't digested yet.

Topaz half-considered putting her sweatshirt under Ms. Frost's head - the constant thumping looked painful - but maybe it was a way for her to process the things she'd learned? Either way, best not to interrupt. She put her sweatshirt next to Adrienne's head in case she wanted it and pulled out her notebook. "That seems to be the general consensus," she said as she flipped through the notes she'd scribbled out. "That and some stuff about ways to challenge the race-wiping-out-y space gods." Although how one challenged a god was beyond her.

"Two thousand years." Wanda's voice was soft, curious and horrified at the same time. "No wonder these texts never made it into greater publication. They've all been seen as hoax by anyone with even the faintest grasp of history." Though did the Court gather them because they knew something about them or simply because they were deemed valuable? It did not seem prudent to inquire at the moment. "Did anyone else stumble across references of being able to challenge these gods?"

"It's like..." Billy trailed off as he looked up from one of dusty tomes. Trying to focus amid the jumble of words and languages floating through his mind was more challenging than he expected. His spell had worked, more or less. He couldn't exactly read all the texts but skimming them, certain words would pop up, and if he focused enough, they made sense. Sometimes. He shook his head, trying to clear the muddle and the headache. "It's like Stargate. All these myths...they are actually real. Except...you could kill the Goa'uld."

Emma reached a hand down and lightly touched the back of her sister’s head, using a trace of her power to take away some of the thudding pain from Adrienne. “Myths are a good way to hide truths in plain sight,” she said. “And thankfully someone had the sense to note down a few oral histories before the last speakers of a few languages died out. There was something from a rather obscure tribe that lived and died in Central Africa that mentioned a bird made from fire that protected them when a hole opened in the sky.” She inclined her head at the Red Queen, a thanks for permission to access the books and the capacity to read them.

Snuggling into Topaz's pillow-sweater, Adrienne looked up at Emma, smirking. Now that her sister had taken the worst of her headache away, she felt more like herself again. "A Firebird? Like the Stravinsky ballet? We can save ourselves by performing a ballet? Or, wait! Like a Pontiac? Maybe we can appease the space gods with an offering of a Pontiac Firebird?" She'd come across a reference to the bird of fire herself, remembering the phrase, but now she had to find out which mental box she'd put it in her Repository so she could digest the Reading it was contained within. She put her face back down into the sweater to open the floor to someone else while she continued to sift, in case they'd also read something about the fire bird.

Amanda repressed the urge to roll her eyes at Adrienne - she was always loopy after too much Reading. "Firebird as in giant flame-y bird," she supplied. "Like..." she reached for a particular book, and after a moment of flipping through pages, she stopped and held it up so everyone could see the engraving. "This one, in medieval Germany. 'An angel of fire came down from the sky and saved us all from Judgment Day...'" she read, translating the Old German as she went. "And like what they saw Jean do at Muir," she added. "When she fried Magneto - she went all firebird at him."

"Is that all we could find?" Wanda asked, gently putting back books that had served no purpose. It was a form of pacing - she was still trying to process everything that had happened. The death of Magneto, for which she cried no tears over, still seemed strange and out of place with her world. Add on writings older than should be possible, battling gods ... No. This wasn't exactly a normal situation, even by their standards. "Because if not, then I believe we need to get the word out to the others about the firebird and the ancient writings. Sooner than later because Jean manifesting the exact thing we're looking for cannot be accidental." 

Topaz was still scribbling in her notebook as everyone talked - at the bottom of the page she wrote firebird? on one side and Dr. GS? on the other and drew a line between them. "So this is the end of days mad priests are always walkin' through streets preachin' about?" She murmured, more to herself. "I thought there'd be more thunder."

“Give it time,” murmured Emma, lightly stroking Adrienne’s hair. “A bird made of fire and mad space gods? There’ll be plenty of thunder to come. Just... give it time.”


	5. Fires From The Ashes - Log 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ororo leads a team to Africa and discovers Apocalypse himself.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

It was hot. 

It was dusty. 

And what they would discover was surprising. 

They'd found information leading them to Africa; following a trail of supplies and armaments to a small site away from town or really, anything that could pass for civilization. It was difficult to find a place to stake the location out of, but using their skills, they'd managed to persuade a local goat-herder to lend them his hut. Money probably helped too. 

So here they sat, taking turns in front of the window, watching the warehouse for any type of movement. 

Surveillance was far from the most exciting task in their repertoire, Ororo knew, especially for those not accustomed to it, but it was also the most important; without detailed knowledge there would be no point in acting. They had already traced the weapons this far, but the next step remained shrouded for now. 

It had been predictably difficult to even get here; the sales had been encrypted and routed through enough dummy accounts that the first few passes had turned up nothing of note. It was only a lucky coincidence and prior run-ins with a particular holding company that had flagged up the proper route to take, and from there it had still taken more than a few bribes and twisted arms to get them the information they needed. This had led them here, to this hut, in the middle of nowhere. 

"Any movement yet?" she inquired, glancing across to the pair at the window. 

"Nothing clear. Too much dust." Marie-Ange said, from behind a pair of binoculars. "A very little bit on infrared, but whoever is in there has space heaters or sun lamps. It could still be a pot grow farm." She ducked under the windowsill and rubbed her face. "Eyestrain, someone else take this please." She waved the binoculars. "Plus something is not right about that building. I want to try something." She explained, as she pulled out a sketchpad. 

Callisto rose to her feet and moved over to the window without a word, reaching for the binoculars, though she left them dangling from her hand at first, just leaning up into the draught from the window. 

"I don't think its pot or opium," she said blandly. "Though hard to say for sure, wind's not quite right." She lifted the binoculars to her eyes. "There's movement though." 

"Given lack of access to lamps with the right wattage, particularly in this part of Egypt, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it's not pot or opium, which leaves us with... what? Evil monkey people with questionable taste in hats?" Wade asked, not bothering to raise his eyes from the whetstone he was sharpening Selma on. 

"Well, that's a lot of evil monkey people," Rachel commented, tilting her head at an angle to watch Marie-Ange work from her perch on top of a rickety table. She was fiddling with one of the guns that Wade had nonchalantly dropped in her lap ("You want some shuriken to go with that?"), booted feet idly swinging from side to side like she hadn't been sending a bunch of vague telepathic pings out every couple of minutes. "Don't have an exact number, but there's a couple'a monkeys with larger-than-average TP presences." 

Which, y'know, meant mutants. 

"Evil monkey people. Is there any fucking way this could get worse? Because I want to start a fucking betting pool. A hundred dollars says we find something really fucking sick out here," Cammie said, her arms crossed over her chest as she bristled, mostly to herself. She didn't like this situation or anything to do with it, but here they were. Life: it liked to beat the shit out of you. 

"I want that confirmed," Ororo said, rising from her seat and glancing around at the group. "I will provide the cover - Callisto, Marie-Ange, Wade, you will approach and verify. Take scarves and goggles - you will need them." 

"Sure thing," Wade said. "Sandburn's a bitch. I only just regrew this eye." Standing up, he sheathed Selma and fitted the whetstone back into its pouch on his belt. 

Marie-Ange set down her sketchpad and rubbed at her face. "There is definitely something in that building. There is no way that they need those sorts of reinforced walls for a warehouse, and there is not enough power going in for a hothouse. They tried to conceal some of it but that building is not just someone's smuggling den." She slipped the goggles over her eyes, but then pushed them up on her forehead. "I am going to be useless once the duststorm is very thick. Rachel, could you... " This was absurd. "Get me up high? If Wade and Callisto are seen, I can provide a distraction but only if I can see." 

The younger redhead hopped lightly off her perch, gun slipping into a thigh holster as she moved over to the window and peered skywards, making grabby hands at Callisto for the binoculars. 

"Sure. I'll send you up in a bubble like Glinda the Good Witch. As long as you don't need to send anything physical through the bubble," Rachel said, her continued nonchalance somewhat out of place for the situation and disjointed with the smooth blankness of her face. "If you do, give me a signal and I'll give you an opening." 

Callisto pulled her goggles - her own, as she needed them in that sort of light, even without a sandstorm - down over her eyes, and grabbed a scarf to cover her mouth and nose. She unhunched as she got clear of the window, straightening up and shaking out her limbs a bit, and then checking her knives, patting herself down - arm, arm, leg, leg, ankle, ankle, small of the back, shoulder holsters... "Ready." 

Pulling a pair of military grade goggles out of a pouch on his belt, Wade put them on, then tied a bandanna over his face to cover his nose and mouth. Tac vest, guns, and knives - everything was good to go. "Let's go Chickadee, Ladybird, Thing One." He grinned though no one could see it. "I'm Thing Two." 

The wind was already stirring as they stepped outside; they had to slam the door shut to keep it from pushing piles of sand into the hut. Though their faces were mostly covered any other exposed skin was soon stinging as the tiny grains scraped over it and they hurried tugged sleeves and collars up to shield themselves. 

A translucent bubble formed around Rachel and expanded to include Marie-Ange as Ororo's sandstorm started gaining traction. The psion gave only a word of warning before gently lifting them off their feet, moving higher but within the swirling dust as Wade and Callisto advanced on their target under the provided cover. 

The solid and yet not air under her feet was unnerving. Marie-Ange hadn't trained much with telekinetics. Ororo's and Sofia's winds, yes, but this was a far cry from being whipped into the air by a gust. This was eerie silent stillness surrounding both women, a bubble of calm inside the intensity of the dust storm. ~Deadpool, Callisto, we can see you. You have...~ But it was ridiculous to say. "Aerial support if needed." 

The skin on the back of Wade's neck was red and slightly raw by the time they made it to the building they'd been observing. Apparently his healing factor didn't prioritize surface abrasion for whatever reason. That'd be a bitch later, but for now he motioned to Callisto to see if they were close enough for confirmation on whether or not mutants were in the building. 

Hand held up to keep her scarf in place, Callisto nodded, and moved closer to turn and talk into his ear. "Definitely in there," she said, "but I dunno how many - we can get closer and find out, or fall back and report; what d'you think?" 

Wade paused, considering the most logical ways the armaments they'd been tracking would be useful. "We need to get closer," he said, shaking his head. They'd found manifests for heavy artillery in addition to weaponry for foot soldiers. "There's a reason all those weapons came here. We need to know what was worth destroying Muir for." And killing so many people. 

Callisto nodded. "We should bear round that way," she gestured. "Better cover for getting closer, and I don't think there's anyone near those windows." 

After checking their airborne support as best he could - the sandstorm was thick by necessity, after all, Wade led the way around the side of the building as Callisto suggested. Stealth wasn't really a problem, per se, given the wind and the pelting the sand was giving the shack, but it never paid to get sloppy. 

They made it to the indicated windows with seeming ease, so Wade stationed himself a bit in front of Callisto and motioned that she should try listening. They had confirmation of mutants, but he wanted to see if they could get anything else. He made a bet with himself right then that this was the ridiculous above ground entrance to a massive, subterranean lair. It'd have to be because really - Google Earth. 

Callisto was hunched by some barrels that provided at least some semblance of cover, eyes narrowed behind her goggles as she squinted at the building through the swirling sands. Thus she managed to duck out of the way when the nearest door to them swung open, and an imposing figure stepped out into the storm. 

His tall, muscled frame was clad in lightweight leathers in a dark blue. He moved with that familiar coiled-spring stride that spoke of considerable physical capabilities - speed, strength - and he seemed entirely unbothered by the storm, to the point where he had exited the shack without any covering over his head or face. 

That meant, of course, that everyone watching - Callisto, Wade, and those behind the binoculars in the look-out - recognised him immediately. 

Apocalypse. 

Verdant eyes flashed dark and fists clenched reflexively. An animalistic growl started building low in her throat as Rachel, now unmistakably Revenant, unceremoniously shoved Marie-Ange behind her with a fleeting thought, all of her focus now locked in on the mutant that had been the face of death and torture for her whole life. 

Make-believe or not, Essex and Kwannon had been nothing but realistic in their world building. 

And now her parents were dead again, Muir perishing with them. Matt was dead. Catseye was dead. Sam was dead. So many more dead and dying. Rows upon rows of headstones in a graveyard, marked with familiar names and spilt blood. 

She would have screamed, but the murderous intent that settled over Revenant was an icy chill that seemed to burn the very air around her. 

The images of past and present blurred together and the dull roar in her ears rose to a deafening pitch. Power built in her hands and underneath the pores of her skin as the grief she had ruthlessly suppressed bubbled up and frothed over in the form of incandescent rage and sparking waves of energy that rose and built itself into a towering tsunami waiting to crash into the face of the Apocalypse. 

Underneath, as the telekinetic chaos raged, Apocalypse looked up, as though he could pierce the dust clouds. He examined the apex of the dust storm, gave a dismissive nod, and then gave an order to the men and women who had started spilling out of the warehouse. 

Apocalypse's people had been pointed directly in the path of Wade and Callisto. Unerringly so. Uncannily so. 

The bubble of calm dropped out from under Marie-Ange long enough for vertigo to set in, and then it returned, smacking her down flat under heavy pressure. Under the weight of Rachel's rage, it took intense effort to drag her arm up to her jacket, and retrieve the cards stashed there. 

The squad of mutants was not met by Callisto's knives, or Wade's guns and explosives. They were stalled - by a heavy rain of enormous skulls that fell from the sky and splashed into chunky white ooze as they met the ground, people, and the warehouse. 

"Hold positions," came the terse instruction over the comms. Glued to the binoculars back in the hideout, Ororo had spotted Apocalypse as soon as he had showed himself. What she couldn't tell through the whirling sandstorm - which she maintained despite the fact that their presence was obviously known - was what was happening to her team, except that it didn't sound good. She had a few guesses why that might be. 

"Wade, get Rachel out of there - now." 

"On it," Wade grunted, sprinting forward to meet the spot where Rachel and her TK bubble, complete with Marie-Ange, sat down. "Shit," he muttered, fully audible over the comms. It was like Rachel wasn't even there, wasn't processing anyone's presence but Apocalypse's. She dropped that bubble and started moving forward without blinking and Wade knew that look, he knew that face. 

She sent people flying, trapped two different minions between opposing TK walls and smushed them like they were squishy toys for puppies, like they were nothing. "Storm, we're coming in hot," he said, coming up behind Rachel as she started making her way toward Apocalypse despite the skulls raining down on them - none of them touched her. 

By extension, none of them touched Wade as he slid beneath the TK gizmo she had over her head. They'd trained together. They understood one another. She'd never expect him to do what he did next - straight up pistol whip her. She crumpled, Wade wrapping an arm around her waist, as he tucked her unconscious body into his side to protect her from the skulls now hammering down on them. "Retreating now. Thing One, Tarot, cover us - I've got extra guns if you need them. We need an out now." 

Keeping the rain of skulls going and not hitting her teammates or herself meant Marie-Ange had nothing left to reply. She moved through the debris and goo on the ground, only a few yards to where Callisto had stationed herself, poised to cover Wade and Rachel's retreat, pointed to the warehouse, and the dropped a wax-paper wrapped package into the other woman's hands. 

Callisto weighed the object in her hand, immediately realising what it must be. She lost no time before jumping to her feet and launching forward, long strides eating up the ground as she went, unheeding of the gore-covered skulls battering off her skinny frame. 

The rain of skulls tapered off, the last few splattering the ground in one big pile. The mound of muddy dusty goo shuddered a few times, and then erupted into activity, becoming a skeleton army that split itself into two groups, one following behind a marching black-suit clad skeleton, and the other racing back and forth between the warehouse and a white-sheet draped shape that was almost canine. 

Callisto had to hope that this was enough distraction that her actions would go unnoticed. As soon as she was within the range of her powerful arm, she ripped the paper from the transmitter and tossed it at the wall by the window of the warehouse. Mercifully, it stuck, because it was right around then that the mass of skeletal forms began to swarm nearer and she literally had to run over and through them to get out of their way, kicking one skeleton viciously in half as she made her exit, clothes and exposed skin thick with gore by the time she was running back toward the team. 

*** 

It had been a difficult extraction - their cover blown, it was all they could do to get Rachel out without an incident or injury. Eventually they regrouped at a safe house in Alexandria and settled in to monitor the transmitter, which thankfully went unnoticed long enough for them to discern several other key locations in Apocalypse's plans. 

Wade pulled a tattered map from one of the pockets on his tac vest and unfolded it on a table. He stole a pen from Marie-Ange and marked out the cities they'd overheard Apocalypse discussing. "Marrakesh, Cairo, Bangkok, Vaduz, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte - a couple in South America, fucking Vancouver, what the hell. The guy's all over the damn place." He laid the pen down and rubbed his eyes, then went to check on Rachel even though he thought she might punch him for what he'd done. 

"It would not put it past them to have mentioned some wild geese for us to chase too." Marie-Ange said from the other side of the table. "Cypher's little sticky transmitter bug should have destroyed itself cleanly but it is hard to confirm that. But it gives us somewhere to start, yes? What I want to know is, how is he not quite dead? I know who killed him, he should be dead. How is he alive and capable of this sort of destruction?" 

"Sadly I believe finding the answer to that question will be secondary to trying to stop him enacting his plan, whatever it may be," Ororo murmured, leaning forward to peruse the map for a moment before standing and fishing the cell phone from her pocket. After stepping away from the group she was soon embroiled in a murmured conversation, the contents of which included the litany of cities they had just discovered. 

"World domination," a quiet voice piped up, quickly followed by a loud crash as Wade hit the floor with a strangled sound before he could reach Rachel as the weight of her shield felled him to the floor hard enough for his head to bounce off of it but not enough for his ribs to crack as it pinned him from neck down. The redhead swung her legs off the couch as she sat up, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head as she glared down at Wade. Logically, she knew why she had been stopped, but the betrayal of an attack from a trusted ally hurt more than the sharp pain at the back of her skull. "Trite. Should have let me at him." 

"War 101," Wade said, voice calm despite the ache in his shoulder where he'd hit the ground and the pressure on his chest from her TK shield. "Pick your battles if you can. If your sacrifice would have made a difference, sure. Go fight a guy you've got no hope of beating in his territory. You dying wouldn't have done us any good in the long run. You know that, same as me. One life for the greater good - absolutely. Not gonna let you waste it, though, chickadee." 

The snarl that curled her lips was an ugly one, all teeth and rage, but the shield disappeared as quickly as it came as the redhead stood and stepped over him, ignoring the room as she swept into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. 

"And people say I have an attitude problem," Cammie grumbled, "Should she even fucking _be_ here?" Cammie asked, jamming a thumb in the direction of the locked door, "She's going to get herself killed or worse, us." She was coming back from this, if only to rain revenge down on whoever was responsible for all the death in the first place.

"Teams will need to be reshuffled," Ororo told them tiredly. Had leading a team always been this much like playing babysitter? She was getting older while the rest of them seemed to stay the same age... Shaking herself out of her reverie, she took a deep breath and reached for her phone once more. "In the meantime, I want the rest of that information transcribed and sent to the other teams. We may be on the back foot but we are not going into this blind."


	6. Fires From The Ashes - Log 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remy's group does a little covert work to narrow down Apocalypse's destination.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

"Multiple locations? Dat makes it difficult. What was de direction de private plane left in? Right, Remy make some inquires. You stay safe, chere." Remy snapped off his phone, looking at the team in front of him. It was not exactly an assault force. "Dark Riders are on de move and dey think dat Apocalypse is alive and wit' dem. Others are following up on other locations, but we get a choice." 

There was a moment of deep, contemplative team silence at the prospect before a hand went up. The blond in question smiled nervously, looking back and forth between the twenty-somethings and Remy. "I vote we look in someplace with a five star hotel. Or possibly a beach." 

Artie shook his head, projecting "what are the locations?" Time was an issue. Subtlety was an issue. He blended in superficially. Tracking Apocalypse was an issue and one that left him wanting to go change his pants. "and which one do u pick as the favorite?" He looked at Remy and then at Arthur, focusing in on him. "u have luck powers, right? if u don't have a run of back luck, ur guess would be the right one." 

"Doesn't work like dat. But... dey left on a modified DC-10. Old plane, poor range, and headed east. Not a lot of potential sites, since it needs a stable concrete airstrip to land on." Remy said, pointing to Jubilee. "You feel like breaking into Cairo's air control station?" 

"Remy, I like breaking in anywhere, but testing out their security will be fun. Let's see what their citizen's tax dollars are paying for, yeah?" 

Jubilee had been standing close to the door, angled slightly in her stance in case of attack. She'd not always been so jumpy, but several years in the job and the recent bullet wounds had tightened her easy going personality into professional paranoia and a front of indifference that only the people who worked with her regularly could see past. 

She'd found her calling in the life of a spy and a thief, it wasn't where she'd expected to find a sense of purpose and peace but she wouldn't have changed anything, even given the chance. 

"How much time do I have?" 

"Under two hours." Remy said, heading for their car. "If we can find the flight's footprint and trajectory, we can narrow down some of the possibilities." 

As the two spies were having their little confab of shadows, Arthur made saucer eyes at Artie and silently mouthed, with helpfully enthusiastic pantomime, "that's fucking awesome" in reference to the holograms. This was, perhaps, not very subtle, and the man tried to save face a little when all eyes were back on him with another helpful insight. 

"Hi. New guy again. Question: Say we catch up with this these dramatically named criminals. Then what?" 

"We find out what dey planning and if possible, fuck it up for dem." Remy said, motioning them into the car. "Or get killed trying. Never know in dis business, _homme_." 

*** 

Cairo international airport wasn't the most secure airport in the world, but it still certainly had plenty of security moving around. They bypassed the terminals, moving towards an administrative building that a hundred dollars had confirmed for them was where the air control servers were housed. Remy had them all waiting outside of the terminal, concealed near an unoccupied loading area. 

"One exterior guard. Artie, Arthur, we need him out of the way in a way dat doesn't bring security down on our heads." 

Artie nodded and thought for a moment. "I'll distract him. All he'll see are strippers doing a cancan for a minute. He'll need a moment to realize they're not real. You" and he pointed, letting that underscore the text he projected at Arthur "will be visible to everyone but him. As long as you're quiet, he won't know you're there. Just walk up and slit his throat. Knock him out. Something." 

Arthur's shock at the first suggestion played testament to his odd-man out status on this spy team, and it took him a few second a gobsmacking to realize that Artie was staring impatiently. Clearing his mind, Arthur made an okay gesture and put up the hood on his jacket. Go time.

Rather than appropriate from front, the ex-television star circled the small, ground-hugging building and climbed -- the small squat building, like most airports, made up for its utilitarian height by boasting a sturdy entrance covered by a sturdy block of a an overhang. As Artie set up for his illusion, Arthur used a set of generators, a barred window, some loose brick, and some tricky bouts of waiting in the shadows to perch himself on top of the overhang nearest to the side the guard was impatiently pacing toward. The square, concrete blocks of its top proceeded excellent concealment.

Plink.

The guard blinked, turning, and moved into position.

Cancan dancers. 

The guard shifted, shocked, but could not look away. Arthur swung down head-first, feet braced against overhang's ledge, and used his position to tap a series of pressure points on the arm the guard had risen to call for help. A quick third blow below the neck luckily tumbled the unconscious guard into Arthur's waiting grip. With a swing and a heft, the man pulled the limp body up and onto the convenient concealment of the entrance overhang.

Entrance secured.

Remy moved across the tarmac with Jubilee in tow. "Dat was different. Remy didn't expect de off-Broadway treatment." He reached the door and picked it on the run, ushering her in behind him. "We need de flight records." 

"Dude, you end up the weirdest places, also - if you've got an in for tickets to Wicked for me and Kurt, I'd owe you one." 

Jubilee headed up the stairs and then turned to the left, she'd spent the trip in the car looking at, and memorizing building schematics that she'd downloaded from a local data cache that Doug had set up some time ago - you could never tell when you'd need something quicker then International download speeds could give it to you. She'd wiped the cache, set a message in a secure drop spot for one of their people to replace the information, and then turned the phone to slag afterwards. 

"Should be the next door to our right." 

"It is locked." Remy paused for a moment and popped the lock. "You take de lead." 

"I'm just glad we're doing this during stupid o'clock, my accent in Arabic and French is crap." 

Jubilee pushed through the door after a moment of listening to see if there were any unwanted surprises beyond. She moved straight for the computers, inserting a USB stick with cracks that Doug had provided her before they left. It was going to take a few minutes to get through the security and allow her to start searching. 

As Jubilee confirmed the information was downloaded, he started them moving out at a brisk pace. He double-clicked the comms, letting Arthur and Artie know to lose any pursuers and get back to the car. While it was a secure area, the information they'd grabbed had little real value to anyone else, and they were able to easily slip past detection and make it back to the car at the same time as the others.

Jubilee slipped the stick into her laptop and Remy leaned over her. "'Ro gave use de tail designation. Search for its last known transponder signal, arc of flight, and speed."

"Got them, transponder signal shows their last location as over the Indian Ocean, and while their lodged flight plan says their destination is London, from their heading, and speed looks like they're bound for Southern India."

Jubilee sat back, glancing up at Remy with a grin. 

"So, what sort of welcoming party should we send them?"

"Visakhapatnam is de only one on de list which makes sense." Remy said with a nod. "Let's get moving."


	7. Fires From The Ashes - Log 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remy's team discovers Apocalypse only to meet the firebird for the first time.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

Based on the information that they had culled from the Cairo flight system, Remy took an educated guess and brought his team to the Indian city of Visakhapatnam. The city of over two million boasted popular beaches, a bustling seaport and ship building industry and India's own 'chemical alley' of manufacturers and distilleries. But the only thing that interested him was the destination that Apocalypse had circled in his notes: Simhachalam Temple. 

The ancient Hindi temple was a noted tourist destination, and it had been simple enough to move their rental van anonymously into the parking lot, opposite the elaborate gopuram tower at the entrance. They had confirmed Apocalypse' flight had landed although it was too late to draw in other support, and they didn't know if Apocalypse's plans involved just one of the sights, or all of them. Instead, they sat and waited, binoculars trained on the temple. 

Or, well, some of them did. Arthur figured that a crack spy team would know to bring binoculars for everyone. So he sat, watching the rear of the dirt and gravel parking lot, and kicked up a few rocks while learning against the van's bumper. The goal was to look touristy, and the man casually kicked around a hacky sack ball to keep the illusion. 

"So," he casually mentioned between juggles, "Where do you figure we could find a cow to donate?" 

"Dude, focus." 

Jubilee had hopped out of the van to stretch her legs a bit, the dyed blonde hair and valley girl speech pegging her as 'ugly American' tourist effortlessly. It was a cover she'd been born to play, and she did it well. 

She hadn't been expecting the firebird suddenly blooming over the temple however, having been on the lookout for Apocalypse. 

"Looks like we've got some company" 

"Well, dat's something." Remy muttered, watching the firebird slowly descend. For a moment, looking at the fury boiling in it, he regretted being right. He could see a figure in the centre, but it was too far away to make out details. "If we right, Apocalypse should be inside right now. Jubilee, you and Arthur go in through de side. Do not engage until I tell you. Artie, you wit' me." 

They quickly moved out, pushing against the tide of screaming people fleeing the temple as a section of the roof was being ripped away by the firebird. Remy and Artie moved quickly through the entrance and then off to the side, arriving just in time to see the flash of a teleporter as Apocalypse and several of his henchmen ported in. 

Artie pulled back a step, and asked, "do we evade them or engage?" He had illusions read to cloak them, for all that he looked harmless — a college kid surfer here for his winter break, all sneakers, jeans and hoodie, camera dangling over one shoulder. 

Longshot and Jubilee, however, took the high road. 

The architecture of Simhachalam provided many opportunities for footholds along its delicate and decorative stonework and the two, after a brief bout of only slightly competitive parkour, had been able to conceal themselves along the vaulted ceilings of the main amphitheater outside the Gopuram of Narasimhaswamy. Below a series of feral, inhuman men and women confronted a hooded figure in green as a tall, broader man looked on with an air of absolute authority. 

Arthur sat perched on a sculpture of Ganesha as he used his phone to zoom in and record (just like a real tourist). He pantomimed toward Jubilee, who was far more professionally poised. Who is, and this was accompanied with a series of finger gestures toward the scene below and then to a snapshot of the hooded woman on the phone screen, that? 

The stranger seemed oddly familiar. Whoever it was, the photo exposed a shock of wavy red hair. 

Jubilee had to smile at Arthur's antics as she watched the scene below, shrugging slightly after she figured out just what it was he was going on about. There was honestly only so much you could say silently if the other person didn't know sign language and since she couldn't be certain what sort of hearing the people below had, she chose to remain silent and still. There'd be time for talking later when they had a better idea of just what was going on down there, she'd already recognised Apocalypse, but the other woman reminded her of Jean - and that was totally not Jean, she was sure. 

Apocalypse approached the figure, a small coterie with him, as he began to read aloud. Holding up his hand, as if summoning her, he moved closer. They could see the firebird start to distort, as the energy was being pulled towards the dark figure. According to Ororo, his notes and research had spoken of the firebird manifesting before in history and many of the sites he'd noted had been the first place it was seen. Was it drawn to those places or did those places have some kind of other connection? The notes hadn't said. But what they had said was that Apocalypse believed that he'd found a means to control it; a combination of magic and his powers with which he could force the creature to submit and steal the lion's share of the power for himself. 

Remy made a sign to the others, creeping closer to the scene. He could finally see the face of the woman; it was Jean but not. The woman looked younger, harder; predatory. Her face was currently contorted in rage as she watched the lines of fire swirl around Apocalypse. With a sharp gesture, she somehow pulled and the lines stopped as the firebird snapped entirely back to her. With a motion, she picked up Apocalypse in her talon, the African mutant struggling as his men moved forward to attack her. 

Before Remy could move, he could sight of another figure entering the temple. This one in a white, saffron and green military uniform; Imperial Guard. He had slipped in unnoticed, watching the scene before making a move. Turning back to Apocalypse, they watched as he was lifted into the air and for all his power, his body began to diffuse, slowly dissipating into dust under the fiery glare of the woman. As his men attacked her, a fearsome display of telekinesis was shown, breaking bones, tearing away weapons and punching through armor. There was no way that his team was ready to take that on. Instead, Remy pointed at the teleporter, at the back of the room with the few remaining men. On his signal, they moved on them. 

Artie blinded the teleporter, distracting him, aimed, and shot. The man fell. 

Jubilee jumped across the distance between herself and her target, using what might have seemed impossible hand holds and crevices in her journey. Cities, temples, anything made by man had long ago become roads to her and she used them as such. 

She jumped down on top of the man, pulling the scarf she'd been wearing around his neck. It was only now as she used it as a weapon that the wire stitched into the lining was obvious. 

She wasn't expecting the man to chuckle and pull the wire from his neck in a contemptuous sign of power, or to grab her and throw her over his shoulder. She managed to avoid broken bones as she hit the wall but she barely had time to get her bearings before he had crushed her with a charge. 

Jubilee screamed, pushing power out of her back and shoulders to burn him with multi-colored sheets of plasma. 

It seemed to work, as he backed off, giving her room to breathe as she dropped to the ground. Everything hurt, but she couldn't give up, she needed to take the guys out. 

Her scream would have given the game away, even if her use of powers after hadn't. 

She turned, giving the hulking mutant a wink before she sent another wave of molten plasma over him, melting him down in a matter of moments. Once she was sure he was gone, she let go, allowing her body to slump to the ground.

She would have hit, too, if she hadn't been lucky.

Arthur was there in a blink after having dispatched his target in a decidedly less showy, and lethal, way. His eyes darted frantically for Gambit across the room as he supported her head and back, but Arthur did not intend to move her until absolutely necessary.

The firebird had swelled at the assault, pulverizing the last of Apocalypse's men which attacked her. The inside of the temple was now littered with torn apart limbs and splashed with blood. She turned ferally, looking at the other people in the temple, the fires in the air shimmering in intensity. Before she could do anything, a blast of energy caught her square in the chest. The firebird screamed in pain as the Imperial Guardsman from the shadows emerged.

"I am Āftāb-dhamak of the Imperial Guard, and you are under the arrest of the government of India!" He fired a second blast that caused her to fall back further in the air. "You will surrender!"

With a hiss, the firebird lashed out, grabbing him in a fiery claw.

"You _hurt_ me, you insect!" The man writhed in the grip. "A scrap of energy in a bad suit and you dare to hurt me?" Āftāb-dhamak screamed as his uniform was stripped away and his energy body began to glow furiously.

"Dat's what I thought." Remy muttered as he grabbed the teleporter by the throat. "Get all of us out of here now."

"I-"

"Now, or Remy promise de last seconds we have are going to be de most painful of you life!"

The man recoiled at the fury in Remy's look and nodded, jumping Remy and his team out of the temple and far away.

Āftāb-dhamak continued to glow brighter, and then the firebird held it up for a moment. "Now, you can all burn."

Āftāb-dhamak body collapsed into itself, the energy whirling in and then erupting out. The intensity of her power was enough to tear the atoms apart within his body. The energy began to fuel a chain reaction and the temple was consumed as the nuclear reaction flared. Standing at the epicentre of the explosion, the firebird watched at the explosion rushed out, consuming buildings and people with equal ferocity. The globe of destruction swelled before finally vomiting forth a mushroom cloud at the same time as the shockwave smashed through the city. Millions died in an instant, the last sound the shriek of triumphant from the firebird as it disappeared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Āftāb-dhamak = Pulsar in Hindi


	8. Fires From The Ashes - Log 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the same time as the Dark Phoenix appears in India, Angelo's team finds themselves facing alternate counterparts of themselves.
> 
>  
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

It was utter chaos. People were screaming, no one seemed to know what was going on, and on top of that, as if through magic, alternate versions of themselves had appeared. The alternates stood in a line, almost shoulder to shoulder, with a blank, hostile look in their faces. No one moved, but the hatred was palatable. It was clear that no discussions were going to be had.

Jessica marveled at the chaos that surrounded her. She felt as though it was sinking into her bones and the feeling was made even more distressing by the group of blank eyed figures standing across from them. Jessica ran them over with a critical eye and a vague feeling of recognition welled up within her. Her eyes stopped dead on a young woman with bright, long purple hair and purple eyes. She was dressed in a white bodysuit straight out of the eighties, one that appeared to defy the forces of gravity to stay over her rather large endowment. Jessica blanched as further realization set in. 

"Ummm, we'd better be on some fucking good acid or some shit right now, otherwise there's a fucking alternate universe version of me who took fashion lessons from the eighties. Plus, she must be rich as fuck. There's no way those are real. I feel a strange need to cry and beat the ever loving shit out of her all at once. It's odd." Jessica blurted, crossing her arms over her "moderately endowed but still physically attractive thank you very much" bust.

"No, but seriously, what the flying fuck?" Cecilia stared at the version of herself standing next to the Jennifer Beals imprint of Jessica. She wasn't sure what was stranger: The fact that a doppelganger had just appeared in front of her, or the other Cecilia's wild-and-crazy '80s Halloween costume outfit. The hip boots. The weird gold lining around the cleavage that matched gold elbow-length gloves. The skintight green minidress. Whatever was in front of her was way off from subscribing to Vogue.

And it was pissed. Without thinking too much about it, Cecilia threw her forcefield up. "Get close, kids." 

Unsurprisingly, her alter ego did the same.

Angelo was eyeing his own counterpart with something between disdain and horror.

"...there's a world where I dress like that?"

Hope took in her own counterpart as she moved closer Cecilia... decked out in black leather, ripped fishnet stockings, green and purple hair and safety pins... so many safety pins... "How in the world did she managed to get that through her nose?" She muttered as she tore her eyes away and took in the others. 

"Yeah, okay, so, not to be absurdly practical." Cecilia glanced toward her friends, "but, you know. They're not standing there to welcome us to the neighborhood." The other Cecilia appeared to be snarling as she engaged in a similar discussion with the other versions of them. Hand gestures were being made. "So, uh, what now? Plan?"

As if they heard her, the five interlopers from the 80s broke ranks and started moving toward them.

Eyes narrowing at the vaguely familiar (in the most creepy kind of way) redhead in the most impractical battle ever, Rachel tilted her head at Cecilia, gaze distinctively blank as she shrugged and said as blandly as anyone could: "Take them out?"

She gathered a forcefield outside of Cecilia's, crowding force against force as she upped the charge and readied it to fly. The green eyes of her counterpart narrowed as the nylon clad wonder started copying her with narrowed eyes.

TK blast met TK blast, the impact ringing out loud around them and destroying everything within a ten foot radius around both groups. There was a moment of stark silence, then not-Rachel let out a delighted squeal and clapped her hands as she jumped up and down in apparent joy.

Now that was beyond creepy. 

"Screw _this_ ", Angelo declared aloud, almost a snarl, put his head down, and launched himself at his counterpart.

Jessica watched as Angelo charged and she immediately followed his lead. She willed herself to rise, the wind whistling through her thick ponytail. Her counterpart mirrored her movements, and Jessica practically shivered with sweet satisfaction at the prospect of taking out some of her own self-hatred on someone who was, in effect, her. Her own brown eyes took in her counterpart's obviously faux purple ones. She noticed that they were glazed over, as though her counterpart were only half there. Jessica's stomach did a strange loop and she suddenly felt sick. It was the same look she'd had when Killgrave...Jessica shook her head, clearing it of those bad memories. Heat flashed down her spine and she rocketed forward, adrenaline rushing through her veins as she charged. Her vision was practically red and her tongue metallic. Tears of frustration slid down her face as she slugged her counterpart across her invulnerable face, snapping her head to the side. 

Basic defense training or not, Cecilia was not terribly good in a fight. She knew that, even as the other her, this Cecilia-by-way-of-Tina-Turner approached in a calculating, circular motion with a menacing expression across her face. The costumed nemesis seemed to be searching despite the fact that both of their shields were up. At the very least, Cecilia figured their force fields might lock, and then they'd end up in an awkward exchange of kickboxing moves until one of them tricked the other and took the advantage. She adopted as close to a fighting stance as she could visualize. 

And then, just as suddenly, cleavage-Cecilia dropped her defense. The translucent shell disappeared, and she'd broken toward Cecilia with a run. 

"Huh." That was unexpected, and Cecilia figured maybe it was meant to catch her off-guard. So she held her position, trying to stay focused and preparing to slide tackle her incoming foe and get out ahead. When her '80s twin's arm reached out, she started to duck under it. 

Two things happened in quick succession. A malicious look of glee spread across her double's features in epiphany, and the golden hue of building psioplasma pooled as the punch traveled. The duck saved Cecilia from the initial impact but did little to stop the scythe that grew like a spike and clawed against her forcefield. 

Cecilia cried out on the impact, flinching as the initial pressure gave way to a sharp pain. 

The other Cecilia laughed maniacally in a low, smokey alto and pushed harder in retaliation. The shape of her forcefield undulated around her as if in taunt, and she leaned in close to brush her cheek against Cecilia's bio-field. "I was once like you, chica: quiet doctora, all defense, and no home. Primum non nocere.." She laughed again.

Narrowing her eyes at her punk counterpart as she ghosted out, Hope hesitated for a moment then did the same. She had no idea what to do exactly, but she could at least keep her occupied... That thought in mind, she floated up and simply divebombed her counterpart, shifting to the astral plane at the same time... 

There was half a moment of displacement and vertigo before Rachel blinked and found herself in the middle of the astral plane. It was a familiar sensation -- it was practically her first home, in fact, albeit she was not used to seeing Hope and Hope and her annoying counterpart in what she was coming to think of as her own personal head space (pun intended). 

But this she could do. With a feeling that could only be described as smug, she reached out with considerable powers and converged them onto Punk!Hope and weird-as-fuck!Rachel, smothering them under the weight of her psionic force. 

Hope stayed back, eying the situation closely. She had not desire to be caught by the psionic force... Yet her eyes narrowed and a glance back confirmed it. Her own tether, connecting her to her own body, shone with a pearly glow. But if she looked at Punk!Hope's tether, it was dim, almost not quite there and some kind of electricity crackled past it. Perhaps... if she could stretch it... or further damage it...

Stretch it... that was it... Hope fluently rose in the air, calling out: "Catch me if you can!" Calling out minor taunts, she hovered above the force Rachel was projecting, until her counterpart pushed herself and followed her. Hope immediately dove to the side, returning to the real world as she did so. Peeking over her shoulder, she saw her alt following her and immediately let the wave crest in her mind again, shifting her back to the astral plane.

Again she shifted back to the real world and back to the astral plane, as they swooped and dove. Back on the astral plane she paused. This was something she could not keep doing, she was not used to the swift shifts. And neither was her counterpart it seemed. Now not only the tether was glimmering with electricity, but also the rest of her astral form. In fact, it seemed to be increasing as suddenly the astral form faded in a bright glow, her form having fully having dis stabilized.  
Jessica's eyes narrowed from her position on the ground. She was currently attempting to hold her counterpart in a choke hold, but was having difficulties. Her attention was drawn away from her current predicament as the alternate version of the young girl, Hope, if Jessica remembered right, vanished. The moment was fleeting, but just enough for Alt!Jessica to get the advantage and throw the real Jessica over her shoulder and onto the ground. 

"Fuck!" Jessica cried as her counterpart threw her fist forward. Before it could connect, however, the other woman's entire body began to grow fuzzy and insubstantial. There seemed to be a strange ripple around her and, in mere moments, the other Jessica faded away. The remaining Jessica breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank fuck that's over. If God is real, the man's fucked up, I'll tell you that much." She stated plainly as she got to her feet. 

"Multiple universes, multiple gods, and I've met a few of them", Angelo tossed out from where he was throttling his own counterpart until he, too, disappeared.

Cecilia could feel her clone's forcefield scratching, piercing against her own. The pain was sharp, and it shocked her. She hadn't known this was possible - that she could inflict damage like this. "I was never like you," she finally said, her voice strained as she tried to fight through the pain. She focused her strength on her fist, making an effort to punch her doppelganger's cheek away so they could be separated.

No dice. 

"How long can you even hold this for? Let me tell you a secret," and she winked, "Offense is refreshingly easy." Her shield bubbled up around the two of them, stretching to envelop both Cecilias.

Cecilia tried to keep from crying out. The initial pain had been stabbing, and it had been local. Like a scalpel had been sliding against her skin. (There was a thought - it suddenly occurred to her that other-Cecilia had the medical know-how to eviscerate her.) But now, she felt as if she were being crushed or smothered. How was she - well not, she, but this other she, the underdressed she - this powerful? And how was she - actually her this time - not? 

She concentrated on expanding her field against the pressure. "Bitch," she rasped out. Something had to be said, and it was all she could really manage.

"Oh please," and the maniac tittering of the other Cecilia's tone was suddenly clinical, "Do you even use your shield? It is marvelous. Adaptable. It breathes." As if to accentuate this point, the back layer of the steadily constraining enclosure grew six inch spikes. "But it is still tied to our body. A little well applied pressure in the correct soft tissue and nerve clusters..." She tapped a pattern on Cecilia's shield with her long, acrylic nails.

Seconds later, Cecilia was shrieking with pain. Spikes drove into sensitive nerves, as the alternate her employed surgical precision in ways Cecilia had never imagined. Her own shield finally gave way, and it wasn't long before she fell to her knees, still wailing.

"Oh," the green alternate pouted, "I believe you need a doctor." She stepped back, her field adjusting effortlessly, and cracked her knuckles. The pressure on Cecilia increased dramatically, causing the other woman to go white, as the woman's shield contracted completely and lifted Cecilia, encased, off the floor. There was a pop as her finer bones started to crack under the pressure. The double's expression was alight with triumph, "For my next demonstration, let us examine the human skele--"

And then she vanished, sending a howling Cecilia back to the ground.

Hope and Rachel re-appeared in the physical world a moment later (only they knew what had gone on in the Astral Plane), dropping hard onto Angelo as the redhead kicked off and launched a blast at the slowly materialising form of her alternate self -- not quite giving her a chance to reappear before Hope sent her back onto the Astral Plane. Rachel managed a small triumphant sound and traded high-fives with the other girl, but couldn't muster enough for a smile as she quietly hid herself against Angelo's side. 

The fighting had died down for the most part, but the battlefield was bloody. Rachel always hated the aftermath more than the actual battles themselves. 

Jessica's eyes trailed over the battlefield. She was an investigator by trade and taking stock of situations was her game. Her brown orbs passed over a lone figure nearby and she quickly kicked off from the ground, moving through the air in order to investigate. She landed about a foot from the figure and her stomach began to do gymnastics when she realized that it was Dr. Reyes. 

"Dr. Reyes? Are you alright?" She asked, kneeling down to further investigate the other woman. Her face appeared to be clenched in pain, and Jessica's demeanor quickly changed. Whereas before there was fear and caution, she had now steeled herself. "Don't worry Doctor, we'll get you to, well, a doctor." She stated as she reached down, careful not to hurt the doctor further. She lifted her gently, careful to watch her face for any signs of pain. She knew that sometimes it wasn't the best idea to pick someone up that was hurt, but the good doctor didn't appear to be put into any further distress by the motion.

"Angelo! Dr. Reyes is hurt!" She yelled as she launched herself upwards, careful not to jostle the woman in her arms too much. "I'm getting her somewhere safe, stat!" She called before she took off, hoping that she could make it time.


	9. Fires From The Ashes - Log 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Doug's team is likewise ambushed by alternate versions of themselves.
> 
>  
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

When they'd entered this residential area, there'd been calm and quiet. Now there were screams, and people everywhere, fleeing the scene.

With so much going on, it was easy to miss the sudden appearance of a group of five, standing proud and tall. They stood for a moment, the picture of order and stoicism amid chaos.

Then the goose-stepping started, four figures moving in perfect unison as the fifth took to the air. There was anger and hatred on their faces, and a familiarity that took a while to process because of the swastikas and iron crosses.

And then, suddenly, as they moved past fleeing locals with little more than a sneer, it became clear. It was them: Sue, Doug, Sarah, Gabriel and Namor. And they were Nazis.

Sue blinked at the group in front of them rubbed her eyes and blinked again, "Someone, please tell me this is a really really bad Halloween prank or magic mirror or something, cause she looks just like me."

"So this Apocalypse has clones? Or are we hallucinating?" Namor's eyes were not even on the group of alternates, but instead were dead-locked on Doug. As the senior member here, the man would know more about what was happening. The five of them had been sent to scout for Apocalypse's forces, but this was too soon after the party had landed. "They shouldn't know we'd be here."

Doug swore feelingly and gutturally in a language that didn't sound familiar to any of the others. "Nazis. Because what I really wanted when I woke up this morning was to meet _Obergruppenfuhrer_ Doug Ramsey." He took in the composition of the two groups, even as his skin was crawling. "I don't think this is Apocalypse," he told Namor. "This is something else, I just have no idea what."

Still, the other group was in their way, and he doubted they'd find much common ground to parlay with Nazi clones. "Sue, I need...Nazi-me taken out." He'd checked the rank insignia and the way they carried themselves — his alternate was clearly the ranking officer of their group. "Sarah, I need to know what kind of tech they've got on them." He looked at Gabriel and Namor. "And then we take them out hard and fast — see how they like being on the receiving end of _blitzkrieg_."

"On it." Sarah replied, already reaching out with her abilities to try and discover the extent of whatever tech they were packing. Her range didn't extend a great distance but it was able to cover the gap between them. It didn't hurt that she wasn't trying to do anything too specific either, just a technopath's variation on sonar or radar.

"Nothing too fancy or out of the ordinary, not that I can pick up anyway." They had guns, though, which was more than she could say.

Sue just nodded and faded out of view carefully, and silently making her way over to Doug's evil doppelgänger, if she could take him out of the equation then life for her team mates would be so much easier. The girl was so focused on her task she failed to notice any warning signs until her forcefield ran head first into a solid wall...an invisible solid wall. The blonde's first reaction was to lash out with her forcefield, trying to overpower her alternate, but she was mere milliseconds too slow, as a second forcefield flared up, sandwiching hers, but almost instantly her forcefield connected returning the favour.

Sue let her invisibility drop away as she shimmered back into view only inches away from the other Sue; it was almost like looking into a mirror, if it wasn't for the way her doppelgänger was dressed. Neither girl spoke, just let out an unintelligible hiss as more forcefields piled onto one another. Sue's mouth twitched upwards into a smirk as she let her first forcefield vanish, letting the entire weight of the combined forcefields fall on her opponent, only to realise that the other girl had had the same idea. Both Sue's gave each other a shocked looked before their faces went blank as they slammed new forcefields onto one another, and let old forcefields dissipate. It was the very definition of a stalemate, Sue realized as she gritted her teeth, but she absolutely refused to be the first one to give way.

Where Sue had chosen the sneaky approach, Namor opted for the “hard” side of “hard and fast.” Any doubt about the situation was shrugged off with the mission at hand and replaced with a steely expression as he removed the outer shell of his pants to reveal a much more flighty-ready pair of compression pants.

An icy command — “Scatter and confuse” — and terse nod was all Gabriel got before Namor took to the air. The four German-flavored alternates were still clumped with military precision even due to The Sues’ Battle of Forcefields, but this provided an opening free of walls for the flying brick to strike. Where their own Kaiser of the Sea had gone to was unclear.

Namor crashed into the group of doppelnäzis like a bowling ball.

Gabriel sped into action, trying to push the shock of seeing himself in Third Reich drag out of his mind. He bolted toward the group of Nazis, intent on landing a few blows and catching them off guard. As he raced toward them, he caught motion in the corner of his right eye. It was a new experience, and it startled him enough that he lost focus and broke back into normal speed. It shouldn't have, because, it was so obvious: Hitler Youth Gabriel had speed powers too.

"Wonderful," he muttered. He glanced up, spotting Namor careening toward the ground, and powered back up again. Now assessing his own clone to be the biggest threat, he doubled back and ran toward him, hoping to intercept him before he reached the group of Xavierites.

Apparently, Boy Blitzkrieg had made the same calculation. Attempting to head each other off at the pass, the two collided and fell to the ground.

Doug was observing the tide of the battle, as his alternate was clearly doing from the other side. Strategy, tactics, body language - they both had the same strengths. Playing Magic: the Gathering had Doug familiar with the concept of a mirror match - two players who had the exact same deck going against each other. In those matches, it all came down to who played their cards better, and who made the first mistake.

Doug would make sure it was the would-be _Herrenvolk_.

"Slag their tech," he said to Sarah as he pulled his own gun and sent a shot whistling past the ear of the other Doug. Independent thinking - he'd given his team a general direction, and trusted them to make their own split-second decisions from there. Given the Nazi tendency toward hierarchy, it was likely the others would look to their superior - Nazi Doug - for guidance. This meant keeping the man occupied.

"Hey **assbutt** ," he called derisively in German. "Come get some." He volleyed forth a litany of the vilest imprecations he could think of in Hebrew, Romani, and every other language of a 'lesser' people the Nazis had attempted to exterminate. Closing with his duplicate, he unleashed a series of aggressive, efficient strikes to the eyes, throat, and groin.

What better art to fight a Nazi with than _krav maga_.

"On it, boss." Sarah started to do just that before she'd even finished replying to Doug, reaching out with her powers and trying her damnedest to cause all of their tech to go haywire. Some of them appeared to be wearing communicators or earpieces of some kind, and they cursed in German while ripping the wrecked devices out of their ears and tossing them aside.

Sarah smirked and stayed back as Doug wandered in, preferring to stay back while concentrating on her powers for the moment, but she raised her sword and took on a defensive posture just the same.

Sue didn't have a lot of attention to spare for the others as she focused in on the doppelgänger in front of her, forcefields being created and vanishing at the speed of thought. But she couldn't stop a smile pulling at her lips, this was like the most intense chess game she'd ever played. She knew that her life quite literally was on stake here but this was a challenge unlike any other. Every move she made was countered, but she countered every move the other made was countered too. But if everything she did was countered then maybe she could just borrow from someone else. Instead of continuing the game Sue let all her forcefield drop, throwing herself flat as forcefields collided over her head. But where she might have been expected to renew her attacks she drove herself off the ground launching herself forward, letting her head collide with her doppleganger's stomach driving the air out of her lungs as Sue smiled, "Always did tell me to use my head," she noted wryly.

Sarah's distraction meant good things for Namor. His first strike had broken the group apart somewhat -- the two Susans locked in their battle, a little distance between the grimmer, European versions of Sarah and Doug. Once he was able to loop back, he zeroed in on the nearest open target: Dame Vale.

Observing passively from a nearby rooftop, Namitler shook his head derisively as he rested idly against a golden trident. " _Komplett unsinn_."

" _Greifen die Schwächlinge!_ " screamed Netzwerk, the ersatz Sarah, as she leapt into action. While her tech was already messed up thanks to the real Network, she still had her fencing sword handy and she whipped it out, slashing at Namor with the kind of speed and accuracy the other Sarah only wished she had. The Namor she battled took the majority of these slices full on, twisting unconsciously in the air to deflect more direct stabs, and was left with a series of shallow cuts for his effort.

But now he was completely within her sword range, and the two grappled until Namor held Netzwerk firmly in a choke hold.

The utter viciousness with which Doug laid into his doppelganger, both verbally and physically, probably said a few things about his self-image that would need exploring in therapy. But that was why Frost Enterprises paid Dr. Gus Grim an absurd amount of money. And the tactical thinking was sound, because without _das Sprecher_ to hold them together, the _Reichsmutants_ were scattered and disorganized.

The fight between the two Dougs had quickly degenerated into a brawl that was all bloodlust, no technique - eye gouges, fists to the groin, and headbutts all featured as the pair rolled and grappled on the ground.

"Enough!" Sue slammed a forcefield down between the two Dougs, forcefully separating them as her eyes blazed with a cold fire. "You stay here," she told the Doug alt in an icy tone as she flicked a hand at him spearing a forcefield through his leg as she turned to face her mentor. "Snap out of it Boss-man," she told him as she closed the gap between them. Doug had, was, really worrying her with the sheer viciousness of his attack on himself. "We need you coordinating us, dealing with them," she gestured to where her alternate was struggling to her feet from where Sue had sucker punched her. "not just focused on him."

Susanne Sturm vanished to lick her wounds, leaving Sue to counsel Cypher further.

"Dammit." Sue was right, Doug needed to get his head in the game. He surveyed the battlefield, trying to get a feel for what was going on.

Gabriel's head moved right as Blitzkrieg's fist tried to connect with his face. Concentrating on hitting the shit out of each other had taken enough mental energy that they'd both slowed back to normal speed. "How," Gabriel grunted as he ducked an elbow flying toward his throat, "did I - you - we even become a Nazi?" His fist moved toward his evil twin's cheek.

It was met by a gloved Nazi hand, attached to a speedster who had clearly been taught combat skills by the Reich. " _Ich spreche kein Englisch, Arschloch._ " He thrust his palm toward Gabriel's nose.

" _Joder,_ " Gabriel muttered, his hands moving too late to stop Blitzkriegriel from giving him a nosebleed. He staggered backwards a little." _En serio? Te uniste con los nazis?_ " He wiped the blood from his nose and straightened. After a second, they resumed sparring. " _en este uniforme? Que tipo de hipócrita eres?_ "

Nazi Gabriel shrugged between jabs. " _Que puedo decir?_ " He let out a wicked smile, and his eyes traveling up for a quick second toward where Nazi Namor was perched, regally watching the fray. When he looked back at Gabriel, his admiration was clear. " _Él es muy persuasivo._ " 

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me," Gabriel muttered as he left his feet and launched on top of his Blitzklone. "Namor?" "Seriously?" He was shouting now. That there was a world in which he could be a Nazi was disgusting enough, but this was vile. "Freaking Namor?" Now on top of his alter-ego, he pinned him to the ground and punched the other him in the jaw. 

Gabriel's yelling carried far enough to distract the grappling battle Namor and the expertly coifed Sarah double. This mistake cost him dearly -- Netzwerk had enough time to fish a small plastic device from her overcoat and stab it into Namor's neck. And then, as she blinked and Namor registered an annoyed expression, stab it in a few more times until it took. 

Namor withdrew and clasped the spot on his neck defensively. He circled the brunette aggressively, sneering, but the look of triumph in her eyes cut through his boiling anger. "You. I don't want to hurt you, but you're making that far too annoying to maintain." His neck itched. The area around the small wound was blackening and veining outward. 

"Ah, _mein König_ ," Sarah's alternate self twirled her rapier in self-satisfaction, "You have already lost." Her accent mangled the words. 

The lines spread. Namor spasmed violently, falling to one knee. He punched the concrete so hard it fractured the blacktop. Netzwerk laughed gleefully in reply and bowed mockingly. 

"You see, my nanites can self-repair as they eat through your tissue. _Auf wiedersehen, Prinz des Meeres._ " 

It was then that the real Sarah intervened. 

"I am seriously so confused and pissed off right now!" Sarah exclaimed, fencing with her evil Nazi counterpart and trying not to get killed while also trying not to kill herself, because how did that work? All of the different languages that she didn't understand weren't helping at all, and she just wished that this was all over already. 

Having overheard the discussion about nanites, Sarah, keeping one hand on her sword to parry, reached out with her other to better focus her powers. She pointed her free hand at Namor and envisioned shutting down the micro killers Netzwerk had injected into his body. It wasn't an elegant solution but her unfamiliarity with them and their complexity meant brute force was the quickest if messiest way to intervene. 

"I think they're shut down, we'll have to worry about extraction later." she said, not taking her eyes off of her Nazi clone. It'd be a pain to track them all down, who knew how many had been injected, and just the thought of it had Sarah infuriated once again. "Ugh, I HATE THESE GUYS." 

"Tell me about it," Sue agreed turning to face Doug's Nazi clone, "Things were going so well today, and now this," she gestured around her taking in all the Nazis. "This is so totally not the way I saw my day going," she complained as the alternate Doug limped angrily towards her before pulling out his gun with a wicked grin and aiming it at the teen eliciting a wince from the girl, "this is gonna sting." 

The bark of a pistol rang through the air. But rather than the Luger that Nazi Doug was wearing, it was the Glock that Doug-Prime (the urge to try and 'punch time' that thinking of himself that way brought on was filed away for later with all other unproductive reactions) carried in a shoulder holster. Single shot, center mass. "And goddamn stay down," Doug spat at his alter ego. 

Rather than fall over bleeding, though, the ersatz Doug shimmered like a heat-induced afterimage, then popped like a soap bubble before disappearing. 

"You stupid Nazi asshole." Gabriel easily blocked an incoming punch from the Blitzkid, who was still trapped under Gabriel on the ground. The Nazi spat out a string of German curses, all of which sounded violent enough that Gabriel had no problem taking a cue from an action movie and aiming his next punch for the other man's temple. 

As he connected, he felt Nazi Gabriel go limp under him. He hopped to his feet, staring intently at the man's chest. "Still breathing," he said, more relieved than he'd expected. He hadn't wanted to be a killing monster - just a fight-to-survive-a-German-onslaught kind of guy. "Just down for the count." 

And then, just as suddenly as he'd been felled, the unconscious Nazi hypocrite whose ass Gabriel had been kicking vanished. 

Watching some of the Nazis disappear, even after grievous injury, Sarah finally gave herself the ok to rough, well, herself up a little bit. During her next clash with Netzwerk she pressed harder, slashing out and cutting herself at the knees, enough to cause her doppelganger to fall to the ground. Once she was down, Sarah fell on top of her, smacking her evil twin - oh god, don't think about Jessie she had to remind herself - with the hilt of her sword until she blinked into nonexistence. 

There was enough time for a few deep breaths before the mathematics of the situation dawned upon the group. 

As they collectively turned to survey where the two missing alternates had gone, a torrent of water shot up from the sewer grates nearby and made a defense circle around where the alternate Namor stood restraining a venomous Susan with one hand. He looked bored, but his serrated trident was raised defensively. The water rippled in a controlled band, distorting the light that sparkled off the metal adornments that supplemented the Nazi's insignias of rank. Shell-shaped bracers. A belt. What looked to be a crown adorned with shark's teeth and blue glowing jewels. 

"I," and he said this with a tone that was both drawn to smooth over his accented English and to battle the contempt that flavored his features, "Demand parley." 

"Demand." Doug's voice was flat. "Perhaps not the most apropos of words, given the tactical situation, _mein Herr._ " He grunted. "But we will hear what you have to say." He waved one hand to indicate that the Sea-King should begin speaking, while gesturing with the other hand to tell the others to hang back, but that they should stay alert. 

Adolf Namor was nonplussed. "You will be pleased to address me as Prince-King of Atlantis, _Reichsführer of the Reich Ewig_ , Defender of the Purity of Empire." The alternate Sue struggled against his grasp, growing more frantic by the second. The tall, clean-lined man looked at her pitifully and his expression softened. 

"This was not a scheduled invasion. We have no quarrel in this," and then he turned to sneer at his counterpart from this world, "Inferior waste." 

"You've got," Gabriel grunted, his fists clenched and his eyes narrowed, "to be fucking kidding me." He was addressing Adolf Namor, but his sight was focused on SS Sue. She looked rabid. Furious. Malicious. 

It was exactly how he felt. They'd been ambushed by Nazis, and orders or no orders, Gabriel would be damned if he'd let this end without some sort of fight. He started toward the pair of aggressors. 

The water shield rippled only slightly as a speed enhanced Gabriel slipped past the Prince-King's defense and... came to a dead stop as the man's caught Gabriel's forehead as the speedster moved in for a punch. Namor squeezed demonstratively, but without enough force to cause harm. " _Ach du lieber Gott._ Listen to your betters or we can see if you simply disappear." 

"One. Not improving whatever bargaining position you have by calling our home 'inferior waste'." Doug was in his element, and ice crystals practically fell off of every word from his mouth. "Two. 'Not scheduled' implies that you -do- schedule invasions. Three..." In mid-sentence, the last of the doppelgangers vanished away just like their compatriots, leaving Gabriel abruptly falling awkwardly to his knees. 

"...well, that's just rude," Doug muttered. 


	10. Fires From The Ashes - Log 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma's team discovers an infernal foe to challenge them.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

It was as if a portal had opened, jarred on by the random explosions, chaos and terror emanating from the city. Right before their eyes appeared another Wanda, Topaz, Billy, Adrienne, Emma and Amanda. From the look in their eyes, they weren't friendly. Nor did they look like they wanted to talk. 

In fact -- they looked downright hostile.

Adrienne instinctively moved behind Emma, figuring that since her sister had gotten the defensive powers in the family, it was only fair to use her as a shield. "What are you _wearing_?" she asked Emma as she stared at the alternate form of her sister.

“Horns, apparently,” said Emma, raising a surprised eyebrow. “And a tail. It appears the Hellfire Club might be somewhat more literal where they’ve come from.” She reached out, cautiously, with her telepathy, aware that the alt-Emma might have powers that matched her own, but it was like bouncing off a rubber mat, not letting her find the shape of any of them on the Astral Plane. They were there, but it was like an old badly-tuned TV – barely discernible shapes in a sea of crackling interference.

Topaz could only blink as she stared at the group before them. She'd picked her own face out, hidden under a grotesque outer look - what was she like, she wondered stupidly. Were her powers the same? That'd probably be a pain to fight...

"What the hell?" She finally managed to say, taking an uncertain step back.

"Oh, fuck no..." Amanda looked over the group of doppelgangers, noting the horns and tails and cloven hooves, the ripped leather and skin-tight lycra, the glowing red eyes. "Um, call me crazy, but this reminds me of what happened to Meg and Cal and Fred and the rest in that mini-Limbo dimension back last year," she said at last. "They look like us, if we'd been trapped in Limbo for years."

Wanda, the real one, looked on their doubles with a weary expression. Deep down, all she wanted to do was sit down and not get up for a few years but they were to be given no reprieve. Not now and ... possibly not for a very long time. Her powers flared to life and she winced - everything was in chaos. She'd never seen anything like it; unnatural was an apt description. They were real and yet not and ...

Her eyes widened as she saw the something red shift on the other side and realized it was the demon version of her - skin as red as the chaos lines - raise her hands. "Move!" she screamed, shoving the nearest person to the side as a crackling bolt of chaos and entropy was fired directly into their midst.

Chaos. Billy felt it prickling on his skin, itching, begging to be used, far more tangible than he'd ever felt before. He looked across at the demonic version of himself, immediately aware that he could sense it as well. Except that version seemed to revel in the sensation, even reaching toward the alternate Wanda. Sparks of electricity appeared, dancing over his body, arching between the two, becoming entwined with her red chaos. A wicked, Cheshire smile appeared, hovering there momentarily as his physical form began to fade, leaving behind a humanoid shaped electric being. Billy stood mesmerized, the trance only broken as Wanda threw him out of the path of danger.

Adrienne took a second, still using Emma as a shield, to wrestle with the important decision of which gun she should use. North had set her up with a Sig p226 similar to the one she'd used in Genosha and the Heckler and Koch USP Compact she used in her training with him. But had also given her a Heckler and Koch MP7A1 Submachine gun. She'd only just started training with it in their lessons together, but if there were ever a time to use it, now would probably be it, right? "I like your boots," she told her demon self as she unstrapped the submachine gun from her back. "But that headdress thing's gotta go. And... seriously? _A cape?!_ "

“Nothing wrong with a cape, dear.” Emma reproved her sister lightly. She considered the situation for a moment and then switched to diamond form. Whatever was filling up the Astral Plane – or (Emma tilted her head, considering) was using a lot of psychic power to control this group – made her telepathy somewhat pointless. “But if you wouldn’t mind, could you try shooting other-me? I’m wondering if the secondary mutation translated over...”

"My pleasure," Adrienne replied enthusiastically as she dodged a bolt from altWanda, setting her feet and firing a cluster of bullets from the submachine gun at her sister's doppelganger. Though nowhere near professional standards, Adrienne had been training in marksmanship for several years now, first with Bishop and Vanessa, now with North and Kane. As with everything she did, she worked hard at her lessons, and had become quite a competent shot, managing to hit the demon Emma several times. "Wait? Did I sound a little too excited there?" she asked no one in particular as she moved to find better cover. "I swear- I'm excited about the gun, not the target."

Topaz was a bit locked on everything else that was going on, and didn't realize right away when something pressed into her mind. She did, however, notice when she felt her emotions being siphoned.

"Oi!" She snapped, slamming her shields down as her gaze flew to her own deformed alternate. "She drains emotions too. Oh that's just wonderful."

"Let's change things up a bit and play swap partners." Amanda let herself sink partly into the floor as she drew on the city's power. "Naff off, bitch," she grated, a pulse of pure London energy blasting from her hands and into the Topaz doppelganger. 

The altTopaz tried to shield, but no matter what universe she was from, she couldn't stand up to Amanda's power. The blast of energy shattered the shield and blasted the demonic girl back.

"One more reason to stay on your good side," Topaz mumbled despite herself. That attack should have kept her doppelganger down, but Limbo had apparently made her more resilient. She pushed herself back up with a growl, energy sparking between her fingers. Ready for a fight.

It was like trying to grab onto a thousand vibrating strings. Wanda had hit the ground hard after shoving Billy out of the way and was desperately trying to wrest control back from her alter ego. The other version of herself grinned and flexed claw like fingers that glistened with chaos energy like poison. Wanda shoved herself up from it, watching as alt-Wanda glanced at Billy and then herself. "Oh no," she murmured. "Eyes on me."

She grabbed a fistful of the lines, not caring that some didn't stay in her hands long enough to do anything, and slammed her hands fist first into the ground. Entropy exploded out, chewing up the ground as Wanda drove it towards her double, forcing the other woman to scramble and try to block the assault.

Billy groaned, using his staff as crutch to pull himself back to his feet, He glanced across the way at his incorporeal counterpart, the sparks surrounding his own hands seeming useless against his double. "He's feeding on her chaos," he growled, as altWanda looked his way. For a moment, Billy stood there here helpless. There was almost too much power in the air, despite the Wandas' tug of war, and the other Billy obviously had much more practice wielding. He didn't even dare try anything that big. If it went...wrong. A smile broke across his face. Let it go wrong. He raised his voice loud enough so the entire team could hear--they'd get it, though the others had no idea what was in store. "I WANT POTATOES!" One instantly appeared in his hand, and he lobbed it at the altWanda. "This is called learning from your mistakes," he called after it, knowing more were soon to follow.

"Wait, what the _fuck?!_ " Adrienne cried out as a potato fell from the sky. "If it's going to start raining fucking potatoes I'm getting the fuck out of here!" She fired off another cluster of bullets, this time at her alt, who had no gun, but a bow and quiver of arrows. Apparently they didn't have guns in whatever dimension these freaks were from. The bow was nice, though. Adrienne wanted it after she put her alternate down.

Emma scowled faintly as a potato bounced off her diamond form, but didn't take it seriously as she stalked towards DemonEmma, who obviously had inherited her secondary mutation. Adrienne's bullets had sent her bouncing backwards, but now she was heading back into the fray. "Oh dear heart me," she said, when she got close enough to her alternative for it to hear her. "If only I'd been given the tail - what I could have done with it. I could have owned the world." And without any further introduction, Emma punched herself in the face.

The actual Wanda winced as altWanda hissed at Billy as a potato smacked her in the head. An actual, honest to god hiss. She wondered if she could just die of embarrassment. But she couldn't dwell on the absurdity of any of it for long, not when there was an insistent tug on her powers. Her eyes scanned the battle field for a moment before she spotted altBilly staring at her intently. She shuddered as all the strings before her dimmed in color and felt a sluggishness start to steal over her.

Topaz turned just in time to see an arrow flying at her. No time for a shield, but ducking and dodging away worked just well. "Christ," she grumbled as she straightened up, facing the alternate Adrienne, who was already readying another arrow. "Sorry, mind if I borrow somethin'?" She asked as she forced her way into the demon's head, draining her emotions. Not that demons had much in the way of emotions, but there was anger and really, what was more powerful than that?

Energy flowed through her, down her arms, into her fingertips, crackling between her fingers, and she blasted altAdrienne back, the bow clattering to the floor as the demon lost her grip on it in her flight backwards.

"Takes one to drain one, fucker." The voice came from behind the barely-human version of Billy as Amanda used her link with London to pop up through the floor. She rammed her hand into the energy being's back, the back of her shirt beginning to smoke and smolder as she pulled the magical power out of him via the channeling spell Candra had carved into her. "Ow, ow, fucking ow," she muttered under her breath, the runes of the spell glowing red-hot with the power load. But it was working - the creature was becoming corporeal once more as she literally leeched the power from it. 

Except, as she had said, their demonic counterparts knew their weaknesses. The other version of Amanda herself, giant ram's horns sprouting from her forehead and curling back over her skull, wasn't about to let her compatriot be drained. Reaching into her own chest, she pulled out a sword - no, not just any sword, the Soul Sword, Illyana's Soul Sword - and rammed it into Amanda's back, disrupting the spell. 

Amanda screamed, arching backwards as her magic, her connection with London, Candra's channeling spell, suddenly went haywire, energy sparking from her body like an electrical overload. 

"Holy shit what the fuck what the fuck what the-" The whole chest-sword-Amanda-stabbing was too much for Adrienne, who stopped firing and dropped behind her cover. This magic shit was _insane._ She couldn't deal with this. But how could she get away from it? Everything around her had gone to hell. She couldn't exactly walk away. She'd be a sitting duck. Despite everything inside her screaming to run away, she had to take the fight option of flight or fight. 

Getting some precognition Readings off her weapons, Adrienne gritted her teeth and with an annoyed sigh, scoped out the area from behind her cover, looking for the horned bitch who'd stabbed one of her best friends with a fucking magic chest sword. Pretending she was in a DR session with Garrison, she planned out her movements and then followed through, as she'd been taught to do. Rolling out from behind her cover, she paused long enough to line up the correct angle and fired a cluster from the submachine gun into the head of the horned bitch before dashing away, keeping herself moving as the altAmanda poofed out of existence.

Raining potatoes created a small chaos of their own, but seemed to be working. At least his skin didn't feel like it was crawling with power, and whether from that or Amanda's direct assault, or some combination of the above, his counterpart was beginning to take form again. He watched in horror, though, as the situation took bad turn. "I want to be there now, I want to be there now!" he said, picturing himself immediately behind his alternate. Then there he was, wooden non-conductor staff swinging toward his opponent. altBilly had just enough form that it connected with a thunk, and Wiccan whipped it around in a quick uppercut that sent his mirror flying into the air. Billy looked to Amanda, terrified at the raw energy surrounding her. "Topaz, help!" he called out to her. "We've got to help her get control."

The first blow hadn't been quite enough to put out the demon Adrienne, who was already diving for her bow again, but Topaz was faster, blasting her back again - this time she followed her comrades, disappearing.

Of course, peace never lasted long. At Billy's call she whirled around, eyes wide when she saw Amanda. "Shite," she mumbled, hurrying over. The energy that was pouring off the blonde was almost overwhelming.

The sword was gone, but its effect, the ability to disrupt magic, was still sending Amanda's powers haywire. And with the state they were in, who knew how London would react? She gritted her teeth, trying to rein herself in, but she had nothing to work with. 

"Topaz," she grated. "Drain off what you can." Fire was oozing from her eyes like tears, dribbling down her face. "Emma... can short-circuit my powers. Billy... cover Wanda."

Topaz didn't bother with words - she went right into Amanda's head, forcing past her shields, and after only a moment if hesitation she dug in as deep as she could, draining off Amanda's emotions. Fear, panic, every bit of it pulled off of Amanda and into Topaz's head.

Emma, who had, up until this point been thoroughly enjoying her rather random brawl with her equal and opposite (well, perhaps not entirely opposite) self, glanced over at Amanda and frowned suddenly. "Sorry, darling," she said to her alternate self and then, as altEmma dragged her closer, leaned forward and planted a languid kiss on diamond mouth. It had exactly the effect she intended, as she felt the shock course through other-Emma's body, followed by the wave of diamond transforming back to flesh. "I would have loved to see what you could do with that tail," she murmured, as she drove diamond fingers deep into altEmma's skull, until her other-sister fell lifeless from her hand. 

Wiping her fingers with a disdainful grimace on her clothing, Emma turned back to Amanda and Topaz, transforming back to flesh as she did so. ~Enough, Topaz,~ she said and then extended her powers, reaching into Amanda's mind and tapping, hard, at the source of her power, the link between Amanda and London. For a moment, the feedback threatened to overwhelm Emma but she caught it and shunted it aside and tapped harder again, breaking the link entirely.

The witch dropped to her knees, panting as her powers were abruptly cut off. She felt oddly... no, not oddly calm, there was nothing odd about it, given Topaz's intervention. But she felt calm, disconnected, and able to think clearly without the tsunami of grief hiding just behind her walls. "I'm good," she said at last, voice without its usual inflections. "Thanks for that."

On the other side, Wanda's powers had snapped back into focus as the alternate Billy's focus was dragged off of her. But she hadn't rushed back into the fight immediately. Instead, she'd faded back and had stalked the battlefield, gathering chaos to her. This wasn't something she did often - holding onto the energy was like trying to hold onto a live wire except the consequences of what she held close to her was worse than electricity.

But she waited, gathering more, until she saw the other Billy stagger and she saw he was now completely physical. She bolted, long legs chewing up the ground and she reached him right as he turned around. He stumbled away from her and she felt the tug of his attempt to absorb the chaos from her and turn it into something else. Her momentum slammed her into him and Wanda grabbed for him, hands clenched at his throat and chest.

And instead of fighting him, Wanda _fed_ him the chaos. Hands glowed red as she shoved it down his throat, filling him up and overloading his senses. And him. He fought her, with his powers and his fists, but Wanda was not to be moved. The flesh under her fingers turned brittle as the entropy ate him from the inside and the chaos caused everything to shut down. Eventually he shattered under the pressure and red dust exploded out in all directions.

Billy snatched up one of the potatoes by his feet. He let the electricity build in his hand, until the vegetable began to spark on its own accord. He took a better stance, wound it around like a pitch, and threw it as hard as he could at the downed demonic Wanda. It sailed through the air, silent for a moment before hitting her with a thunderous crack. A shower of dust and lightning bolts and red flashes filled into the air, and when it cleared a moment later, nothing remained but a smoking crater.

Relieved that Amanda seemed to be okay, Adrienne scrambled over to her friend- grabbing the bow dropped by her alternate self on the way- to make sure for herself that she was in one piece. "You really didn't get stabbed to death with some chesty demon sword? That's great! Magic is so fucked up," she muttered grouchily under her breath, scanning the battlefield for the remaining demons and taking aim with her submachine gun at the other Topaz. Or was it the real Topaz? Shit, she needed glasses. Maybe if she survived this. No, it was demon Topaz. Whew. That could have been bad.

Topaz didn't particularly care for something - especially a demon - running around with her face and her powers. She was prepared to just let Ms. Frost shoot it - until she saw the energy sparking through her alternate self, watching her zero in on Adrienne.

"No you don't," she hissed, putting Amanda's emotions - the energy buzzing around in her head, just begging to be used - to good use and blasting the demon. The other Topaz tried to resist, but it was a token effort at best - she'd burned up all of her power early on, while Topaz still had a little to spare. The attack slammed into the demon, and she disappeared in a burst of light. Topaz squeezed her eyes shut, taking a deep breath. That had used up a bit more than she'd intended; her head was starting to hurt.

After a moment she opened her eyes, a bit blearily, and looked around. "Is that it?"

“For here. And for now,” said Emma, after a quick visual and mental scan of the area. She gave a quick shudder, wiping her fingers once again on her trousers. “But we did just get attacked by our demon-selves from another dimension who appeared to be under a serious psychic compulsion.” Emma scanned again, a broader sweep to see if she could find the source of the psychic compulsion, but instead she found... “There’s a hole in the world,” she said softly. “So many people missing...” She took a deep breath. “I think we need to find out what’s going on.”


	11. Fires From The Ashes - Log 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ororo's team faces cyborg alternates in a literal brush with death.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

The buildings around them were barely standing, and the marketplace was quickly clearing of people. It was hard to tell who was injured, and who needed assistance, but before that could even be assessed, a shimmering light filled the area. When it cleared, the rubble was dotted here and there with twisted metal and the smoking wreck of a burned out car, jigsawed together in ways that just didn't fit. 

As they cleared their eyes, it became clear that not only were they not alone, but that the light was accompanied by a cluster of people, moving to take cover. Faster than they could react, a rainstorm swept down the street, pelting them with icy rain and pinpricks of hail. In the midst of the unexpected downpour they could hear a familiar lightly accented voice giving commands, as through ordering a well-trained hunting dog - and then the pack of strangers was upon them, and it was blindingly clear that these strangers weren't at all. 

Ororo had felt a shiver run across her skin as the rain began to hammer down on them - not from cold, which she barely felt, but from recognition, a feeling of knowing that this weather was not natural, that it came at the behest of a mutant much like her. 

Or exactly like her. The silver mohawk was familiar, even if the copious facial tattoos were not; the white-clouded eyes were like looking into a mirror. 

Wade stood very still for a moment as he scanned the people in front of him. Then he shifted forward just a little and slightly in front of the people who didn't have healing factors - which was almost everyone else - as he muttered, " _Fuck_ me - I do _not_ look happy to be over there - why am I wearing a leash? Ladybird, just FYI, leashes aren't exactly my thing. Also, why is there so much blue spandex?" The not-him standing quietly - _quietly!_ \- beside the redhead in white-grey who held his leash turned right then to stare at him and it was, quite possibly, the most unnerving thing he'd ever experienced. Half of his face was nothing but scars, like he'd been badly burned. His eyes were clear, though - sort of. They looked pretty flat. 

Callisto's eyes found the other her pretty quickly, a slight smirk playing over her lips as she took in the same shaggy hair, the identical leather-and-denim-and-knives motif, the old familiar eye-patch, the surly Callisto-pout, and the fact that other Callisto actually looked a lot better than she did, free of the patchwork of scarring that now covered most of _this_ Callisto's body. 

On the other hand, it took a moment for North to recognise himself, given that all that seemed to be left recognizable on his person was a pair of blue eyes, dead and lifeless. The rest of his face was masked and his body covered mostly by a strange, dark metallic armour - No, wait. The precog blinked against an assault of images as his powers kicked in somewhat belatedly. 

Not armor them. Cybernetics. 

Cammie normally wore street clothes, no matter what the situation. The woman with her hair and eyes? Was dressed like a stereotypical ninja, her lower face masked and all. She wore no bandages on her left arm but it was just as green as Cammie's if not more so, turning black near the finger tips. 

Cammie just stared. 

"Holy fucking shit weasels," she muttered. 

Marie-Ange was silent, her face set in calm concentration, if you overlooked the irregular twitch in her eye as she pulled card after card from her pockets. "I need cover. A lot of cover." 

"Covering fire, covering distraction, covering physically?" Callisto muttered, glancing briefly sideways at the other woman. 

"All of the above," Ororo murmured in a voice that could nonetheless be heard by everybody in the group. "Everybody up against their counterpart - I want as long a delay as possible as Marie-Ange does her work." 

North unholstered his guns a half second count before his cyborg counterpart swung around the sniper rifle that had been hanging on his back and took a quick aim. The German man blinked at the vision in his head of his doppelgangers arm shifting back to reveal a machine gun and allowed himself to scowl. What the actual fuck. 

Without looking at anyone, the marksman turned and sprinted away, leading the deadly spray of bullets away from his teammates and trying to get a shot in edgewise. Vaguely, North wondered if the other North had precognition. The thought didn't go very far as he turned flipside, leaned back mid air and fired a clean shot at Cyborg North's left eye. 

There was a searing pain in his right shoulder as he landed painfully behind building corner, but North paid it no mind as his bullet hit its target dead centre. 

It should have been a quick death, but what he saw next in his head chilled him to the bone and the spy scrambled ungracefully to his feet as his counterpart paused, stumbled back from the impact and then cracked his neck and continued advancing, his one good eye trained intently in North's direction. 

Taking a deep breath Cammie rushed forward, whoever her alt was did so at the exact same way. Suddenly, she was thankful for all the extra fighting training she had over the years because evil!Cammie didn't fuck around. They met at the halfway line. Poison wouldn't work, so this was a brutal fist fight. The first blow clocked Cammie, but she gave as good as she got. 

"Do not hesitate to shoot through my images." Marie-Ange's voice was toneless as she ducked behind a overturned market stall. The wind whipped the canvas walls up and tore them away from the wood frame. They twisted wildly and then a gust ripped them away completely, flattening them with a smack against an immense white figure. The headless statue's wings flapped madly, and it stomped forward. 

Wade grunted his response rather than attempting words because both he and not-him had drawn guns and started firing. They mirrored one another perfectly - aside from the scars on not-him's face, the only major difference between the two of them was the leash now hanging limply down the other version's back. Duck, weave, fire, duck, find cover, fire, fire, fire, duck. It was eerie, the way they matched one another - even more so when they both dove from cover and flung knives at one another before dodging again. 

As the Wades were with guns, so were the Callistos with knives. Other Callisto was taken aback, at first, by her counterpart's appearance, giving the slightest of starts as Callisto drew closer, but it wasn't long before they were running full-tilt toward one another, dodging each other's thrown weapons 'til they were in range and then launching at one another, tumbling to the ground in a scuffle, skinny limbs tangling 'til it was nigh-on impossible to tell which of them was which. Apparently Callisto had thought that abandoning their usual acrobatic mixed-martial combat style for some down-and-dirty wrastlin' would throw the other woman off. Unfortunately, Callisto apparently had the exact same idea. Who'da thunk it. 

The two Ororos rose to the sky; perhaps thankfully, neither called down rain nor lightning in their duel since it would have been all but pointless. Instead they sent gust after gust of howling wind at one another, hoping to knock their opponent from the sky or at least disorient them long enough to draw near. This caused the more unstable debris from the surrounding buildings to shower down, obliging those on the ground to dodge out of the way of larger pieces as they crashed to the ground. 

Wade had engaged the not-him with a classic tackle. Not-him had countered with a skillful roll to dislodge him and followed it up with an attempt at crushing the vertebrae of Wade's neck with his elbow. But Wade had seen that coming and blocked it - they were literally anticipating every move. It would have been really fucking awesome, actually, if not-him's eyes weren't mostly vacant. It was like he was on autopilot or something - and he kept twitching toward the redhead in white. Wade was pretty sure he knew about her but it was tangential, a niggle at the back of his mind. 

And then all the hair on his body stood on end. Both he and his alt froze mid-move, knife edges gleaming brightly, before looking at one another and half-smiling. "This is gonna be interesting," they said in unison as the static electricity in the air suddenly vanished. They looked up at their respective Storms and then glanced back at one another. Wade really needed to find Marie-Ange. Her hulking headless angel was still stomping around, but if the holes in it were any indication, it wouldn't hold up much longer. 

The headless statue kept moving forward, striding through debris, rather than around. It's implacable progress was not halted, even when the other Deadpool pulled out a lopsided lump of something, and fastballed it right into the centre of the statue. It collided and then small paff of explosion made the image shudder and slump, and then it reformed itself in mid-step, though smaller and rougher edged than before. 

The angel met its counterpart head on as the grey, chitinous monster grew up out of the street, and the two colossal images grappled like wrestlers, until the enormous buglike monster took the angel off it's feet and slammed it down onto the road. 

The more the fight between Cammie and her silent, naruto-fuck of an alt progressed the dirtier it got. Hair pulling, scratches, grabbing clothes. It was obvious that her alt thought the same thing she did - that there was no such thing as dirty in a fight. 

Both of them were panting, the movements a bit slower. Despite what happened in the movies a fullblown fist fight never lasted that long. You either found an opening and took the pot or you kept going until someone made a mistake borne of fatigue. Thinking fast, Cammie pulled out a move her alt couldn't match and spit right in her face. She didn't bother biting her cheek first. It wouldn't have made a difference, besides it was unnecessary. As her mouth was already bleeding. 

The spit hit her alt right on target and Cammie exploited the split second opening with the start of one of the most brutal beat downs she had ever delivered _anyone_. Even when her alt was on the ground and no longer moving, Cammie kept up, kicking her in the mask until her boot was covered thick in black blood. 

"Take that you doppelganger fuck!" Cammie shouted, "Only I get to be me! You hear that?! Fuck you! FUCK YOU!" 

Both Callistos were battered and bloodied now. Other Callisto appeared to have the upper-hand, having pinned her scarred double to the ground, straddling her and systematically punching her face, looking more irritated and bored than anything else that Callisto showed no signs of politely falling unconscious. Eventually, Callisto seemed to go limp, and Other Callisto sat back, drawing a knife from the small of her back and smirking down at the prone woman beneath her. 

"Well, this was anticlimactic," Other Callisto commented, suggesting a command of the language this universe's Callisto had never quite mastered. Lifting the knife. 

As was so often the case with Callisto, a few things seemed to happen all at once right then. First, Callisto's eyes opened. Catching Other Callisto in that split second, while her momentum was all in the downward strike of her knife-hand, a twist from the woman beneath her converted the motion, pitching her sideways at exactly the moment that a massive chunk of debris came crashing to the ground - right on top of her. Like the proverbial wicked witch, the jeans-clad, biker-booted legs were left sticking out from beneath the masonry, still sprawled on top of Callisto... and then faded out of existence entirely. 

Callisto, still dazed and lying on her back, frowned down at the space where her double's legs used to be. "...Huh." 

Overheard the weather witches still dueled; the winds were ragged now, a howling mess of gusts and eddies that made even staying aloft an uncertain prospect. Each woman desperately tried to call as much electricity to herself, though it was very much like trying to pull against a solid wall; equally matched, there was no way for them to outdo one another and so they were left at a standstill, silver hair bristling on end as they stared at each other through clouded eyes. 

And then Ororo felt it; a flicker of energy leeching away at her call. Hungrily she grasped it, pulling harder, and then it was as if the wall had crumbled and the wave of electricity was upon her. As soon as she was able to she gathered it together and sent it at her double in a thick, heavy bolt which lanced through the sky and exploded in a near-instantaneous crack of thunder. When it cleared, the other woman was gone. 

The persistent and searing pain in his shoulder told North that he had been shot, but he paid neither the pain nor the blood dripping down his arm any mind as he doubled back and launched over one of Marie-Ange's images and directly at his counterpart, spinning away at the last minute so that he could grab the damn cyborg's machine gun arm with both of his and point it directly in his face. 

North didn't need his visions to know that sheer force would work the moment his hands curved around the other man. Cyborg!Maverick was all metal and no give. The machine gun went off as predicted, another spray of bullets he hurriedly sent in Wade's direction, setting off car and building arms alike before the spy kicked up (change of plans!), displaced the large knife in his boot. He caught it neatly in an unbloodied hand, not hesitating in the slightest before he spun to the back, jammed it up the back of the head of his opponent and gave it a vicious twist. 

A shower of bright sparks went up, forcing the spy to roll away to safety and collapse behind a wailing car. Its rearview mirror showed that the cyborg was gone, but the spy was quickly distracted by the blood seeping through his abdomen, shirt clinging uncomfortably to another set of fresh bullet wounds. Goddamnit. It was one of his favourite shirts too. 

Half of Wade's attention was on the not-him. A quarter of it was on Marie-Ange. An eighth of it was on the statue still standing and the bug thing. A sixteenth of it was on the redhead in white who - yes, looked just like Marie-Ange. And the last little sixteenth was zooming around paying attention to everything else - like a ping pong ball on speed and possibly meth. 

Hand-to-hand was all muscle memory for him. He had to assume it was the same for his counterpart. There was no reason to doubt that given how evenly matched they were. The two of them met again, handguns holstered, knives sheathed. They moved smoothly from one martial art to another, the overt violence of Sambo countered by the smooth, elegant locks and attempted breaks of Aikido. They seemed to find a happy place with Krav Maga but discarded that for Odbrana and then Dambe. 

Around and around they went, engaging and disengaging, trapping one another with flurries of hits and blocks, sliding through forms and dredging up techniques Wade had used in at least a decade. The dance continued - until not-him moved out of sync, flicked his wrist, and released a throwing knife that he then attempted to throw at Marie-Ange. 

Wade broke his alternate's wrist before he could actually throw the knife, taking the blade in his forearm to make sure it couldn't go anywhere else. The snap of bone was audible. As was the bizarre little noise not-him made. "Er..." Wade blinked before throat punching his alt and crushing his windpipe. Not-him smiled. Wade blinked again. " _Er?_ " 

The other Wade rolled his neck, which popped several times, and then flicked some razor blades out from somewhere under all that spandex. By the little lines of red seeping out, they might've been under his skin, too. He popped them at Wade, mouthing little air kisses as he did. "Nice. Not as nice as my ladybird, but so nice." He said, in a rough whisper that crackled and popped. 

"What are you even," Wade asked, moving his arm so the razors hit the back of his wrist and the metal plate he'd added to protect his forearms. "My ladybird is _so_ much better than yours. For one - fashion sense. Hello, hotness in heels," he said, frowning as he noticed small bugs creeping out of cracks in the asphalt. They were all... coming toward him. Yeck. 

"No." The other Wade shook his head and stuck out his tongue, waggling it back and forth. "Not hot.." He swung wildly, aimlessly at Wade, all flailing fists and headbutts and snapping teeth, each move blocked and countered until he was pressed right up again Wade. He laughed off another jab to his throat, and giggled as he found himself locked up in an armbar. "No, no, she's _as cold as ice... she's willing to sacrifice..._ " he sung, whispery cracked voice off-key and off-tempo. He grimaced, twisted his body, and his locked arm snapped, shoulder dislocating and relocating as he grabbed the leash that had been tucked up in the collar of his spandex and got it around Wade's neck, choking both of them. 

The bugs skittered over both men, pinching and stinging and melting into hot acid goop before merging and regrowing, until what was left were a score of fist sized evil looking insects. The sky above them went dark as two immense, night-black ravens soared down, each bigger then either Wade. They circled the two men silently once and then swept down, plucking the giant bugs off both Wades with perfect silent precision. 

Wade gave up on trying to breathe for a second, singing along with not-him in his head. He knew the song - liked it, even. But there was no way he'd ever sing it in regards to Marie-Ange. He finally broke free, snapping the leash and twisting around so his hand caught in the collar at the nape of other-Wade's neck. "Don't you know," he said, only wheezing a little. "Everything hurts worse when you can feel the burn?" Despite the scrabbling at his hands and the intense attempts to dislodge him, Wade forced his alternate to his knees and then snapped his neck. From what he could tell based on the windpipe regrowth, this other Wade's healing factor was a lot better than his own. Which sucked, but whatever. It'd take him at least three minutes to mend the bone. Probably. 

Looking up, he caught sight of his ladybird and the other ladybird - just in time for not-Marie-Ange to cock her head slightly to the side and smile. It was a small smile but it definitely sent a chill down his spine and left him feeling like he _completely understood_ why not-him was so on about her being cold as ice. So he stepped on not-him's neck and ground his heel a bit. The huge bug finally dissolved in a shower of acidic ectoplasm - and when had ladybird's ectoplasm started doubling as acid? It was so good his ladybird's didn't do that or she wouldn't be able to get him out of priest holes anymore. 

Not-Marie-Ange literally tutted at him and then said something in French that he didn't understand before a shower of razor blades like the ones still embedded in his forearm protector rained down at him. The razor blades occupied him for a moment, but they dissolved quickly and when he looked up again, a massive grotesque angel grew out of the ground. It was followed a moment later by a stained glass version of the Virgin Mary. 

The images grappled for a moment, glass arms shattering and reforming into great sharp spikes that cut the fresco plaster angel down bit by bit. They rained acid and watery goo on the Wades as they fought. As the stained glass cut down it's opponent, the acid rain gave way to the cleaner goo, until all that fell was slippery ooze. 

And then the angel fell, all at once, and the wave of goop was so that it splashed up over Wade's feet, and then retreated like the tide. He heard a pop, like a car backfiring, and rolled away to keep from being stepped on by the ten foot tall mighty figure of Bea Arthur, wielding a shotgun as long as her own arm. 

Both Wades drew up short, the one with his broken leash dangling about his his shoulders and the other with a smile on his lips. "Dude," they said in unison, both staring up at Bea Arthur. 

"I _want_ one," the alternate Wade breathed. 

"She's from a _comic_ ," Wade said. 

"I want one of those, too," the other Wade replied. 

"My ladybird's got 'em for me." 

"We don't have comics anymore." 

"Sucks to be you," Wade murmured, glancing at his alternate with something akin to pity in his eyes. "Seriously, dude. That sucks." 

"Yeah," the alternate Wade said, nodding slowly. He halfheartedly chucked a throwing knife at Wade, the blade easily avoided. 

Wade didn't respond. It seemed like, for the most part, all these alternate thems were _meaner_ and nastier and overall he was pretty glad he'd wound up where he was if that was who he'd've been dealing with otherwise. "Right, man, this is gonna be pretty epic." 

He knew Marie-Ange couldn't make functioning guns with her illusions, but that didn't mean the images couldn't wield things like batons - which is essentially what Bea started doing. She laid into the stained glass Mary with that shotgun like it was going out of style, using moves he was pretty sure he'd shown his ladybird a few months ago. It was remarkably like bojutsu, only the shotgun wasn't as long as a fighting stick would be - it was heftier, though. 

Through some sort of silent agreement, both Wades began making their way through the sticky mess of goo toward their respective Marie-Anges, all attempts to kill one another halted because they, whatever else they might be, were more concerned with keeping her alive than anything else. They hadn't made it more than a few steps, though, before they both paused again and turned to face a man approaching from their left. 

_Hello_ , the man said, fingers moving through the ASL words with ease, bare chest gleaming despite the debris beginning to whirl around all of them in the chaos of angry illusions. 

"Sup?" The Wades chorused as the man continued forward. His skin was dark, covered in tattoos and scars. He wore a do-rag and when he smiled, it was wide - genuine. The real Wade was very glad Marie-Ange had taught him ASL - it'd been so he could communicate more easily with Artie, but it was coming in handy here. 

_You're not supposed to be here_ , the man signed to the Wade in the blue spandex, his hands moving calmly - almost soothingly. "We figured that out," the other Wade said, indicating his ladybird. 

_Let me help you fix that_ , the man signed, a scythe dropping into his hand from thin air. 

Wade knew what was going to happen - apparently so did his alternate, because not-him just looked aside as the scythe sliced toward him. One moment he stood there whole, the next his head had been cleaved from his shoulders and was soaring through the sky. The scythe disappeared and the man moved without seeming to move. Somehow, he was where he needed to be to catch the other Wade's head before it could hit the ground. 

_You can leave the body_ , he signed to Wade, not-him's head tucked under his arm now as he began to walk through the ever-growing haze of acidic and non-acidic goo toward the redhead in white. 

Bea was losing. Each swing of the shotgun was slower than the one before, and the image had great gaping rents where it's the stained glass opponent had clawed at it. 

Marie-Ange was losing - she'd curled herself under an overturned auto to control her images - keeping her own from trampling her, Wade - and the others was - it was impossible. She was doing an impossible thing, this dance of teammates and boyfriend and images and evil alternates from a place she'd only heard described by Molly Hayes and Remy LeBeau. 

She could feel her grasp on the image slipping away, the idea of it growing mushy in her mind, and with it, the image itself growing soft and deformed. She felt it when the other her's image tore chunks out of hers, and her wail of pain broke through the noise of the fight. 

The stained glass image swiped at the Amazonian Bea Arthur with broken-glass fingers, and Bea's face twisted with the same pain and frustration that Marie-Ange's did. The jagged glass cut Bea across her chest, tearing her open, and Bea screamed silently in sync with Marie-Ange's screams of frustration and pain and fear - but she also stood fast, her feet not moving even though she was almost cut neck to navel. The shotgun turned club rose one last time, swinging for home like Casey at the Bat - but it struck true. 

Shattered glass rained down on the street, becoming drops of dilute acid as both images dissolved. 

Marie-Ange waited, counting her own breaths, and listening to the fight around her. Cammie's indignant cries, Ororo's windstorms - and nothing else - but she kept counting. 

She got to five before the car she'd picked as her hiding spot was pulled away and tossed aside by a hand armored in black steel. 

Marie-Ange curled in farther on herself, and the armored colossus raised its hand to pound her flat. But as the gauntlet came down, without even opening her eyes Marie-Ange's hand came up, interposing itself between the knight and her. Just an open hand against a mass of over-sized armor - and she caught the gauntlet in her hand. 

Between one glance and the next the the man Wade had been following morphed into a woman, hair long and curled and streaked with blonde. She wore a string bikini, blood from the other Wade's neck stump dripping down her side, and she was as covered in tattoos and scars as the man she'd been a moment ago. 

Wade stopped walking, the woman continued on, approaching the other Marie-Ange despite the battle raging. The tattooed woman paused off to the side just a bit and tilted her head, then cupped her hand over the severed head's hair and smiled. She waved her fingers just a little to get the woman in white's attention, then offered her the head, the collar still wrapped securely around the stub of the neck, its broken leash dangling. 

For a spit second, the other Marie-Ange stopped everything she was doing to stare at the severed head. Shadows crept up her face, although her hood did not move, and then she pushed the woman's hand away. "We burn dead pets, we do not bury them." She said, crisply - and then turned away. 

Marie-Ange stood slowly and deliberately, pushing the gauntlet easily above her head, the knight that not-Marie-Ange had created standing immobile but for the push. Then Marie-Ange turned, a graceful pirouette that put her back to the breastplate and brought the knight's arms around her like those of a lover, before she crumpled back to the ground, unconscious. 

And then the knight straightened, rolling its shoulders back and turning toward not-Marie-Ange. Its armor seemed to glimmer as it turned, shifting from matte black to a more burnished gray, and a two-handed broadsword appeared in its hands. Down near the crossguard, a single Norse rune was stamped in the blade - an upward-pointing arrow. 

If Marie-Ange had been conscious, and prone to banter the way Wade was, she might have tossed off a remark about how knights were her jam. But instead, the knight moved silently forward and brought the broadsword crashing down in an overhead strike against not-Marie-Ange, leaving nothing but a crumpled white robe behind. 

Wade had been oddly entranced by the other Marie-Ange's reaction to her Wade's severed head, particularly since the neck seemed to have started regenerating from the slice down and that might actually be partial ligaments and muscle that he was watching reform. Still, he noticed the knight's attack on his Marie-Ange and was moving without conscious thought again - only it didn't seem to be quite as necessary as he'd feared except... he had no idea what she'd just done. That was some quality Disney Princess-esque transformation going on there, though. Or maybe Sailor Moon was a better analogy. 

It was as he skidded to his knees beside Marie-Ange that the mercenary glanced back over his shoulder and saw the woman in the string bikini had followed him. She had wide eyes and her expression was solemn, though friendly, a smile curving her lips upward as she approached them. The other Wade had completely dissolved despite the regeneration that had been going on, neither his head nor his body remaining, which left the pretty pretty princess knight and his awesome sword standing there. 

_I can't stay much longer,_ the woman signed, her brows rising. _I've been very busy in India recently._ Her image flickered briefly - the man stood there, his jeans hanging low on his hips, his chest still bare, and then it was the woman again. _Remember me this time._

Wade nodded, though he wasn't entirely sure what he was agreeing to as he checked Marie-Ange's pulse. 

_Remember, too, that those who are gone are never truly lost,_ the woman continued. The blood on her hands had begun to dry, flaking off from the creases in her palms as her fingers flew through the signs. _I have a warlord I need to visit in Somalia. Look after one another. I'm very fond of you both. She makes a lovely assistant._

"Uh huh," Wade said, nodding again as he dug through a pouch on his belt for a pill. The woman blew them each a kiss off the tips of her fingers - and then disappeared. He couldn't even find it within himself to be any more baffled than he already was. He just focused on finding the caffeine pills he'd stashed and breaking one in half so he could tuck one piece under each side of Marie-Ange's tongue before he lifted her up as he got to his feet. 

Turning to catch sight of everyone else, he counted them off in his head - everyone accounted for except North. If that bastard was dead - but no, no, there his boots were and they were sort of moving. A little. Wade wouldn't let himself thinking about death spasms and things as he carried Marie-Ange over to the car behind which North lay. "Goddammit, Mav," he muttered, kneeling so he could put his girlfriend down before he started trying to count and plug all of the other man's bullet holes. 

Marie-Ange woke coughing, and rolled to spit out the bitter paste in her mouth. A harsh query to Wade was on the tip of her tongue, until she saw him wrapping a bandage around North's arm. Two-person job, trying to get David to stay still so they could hold pressure to the unbandaged wounds and tape down the bandages on the rest. Especially with the creeping visions in the corner of her eye, flashing lights and ghost faces. "Storm! We need to get out now! Maverick is injured!"


	12. Fires From The Ashes - Email

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the destruction of Visakhapatnam, Lilandra sends Charles an ultimatum.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._

To: [Xavier, Charles]  
From: [Neramani, Lilandra]  
Subject: Visakhapatnam

Charles,

Visakhapatnam was the home of nearly two million people. Two. Million. Mothers, fathers, children. All of them gone, less than dust upon the wind; there is barely enough for a proper memorial. My Imperial Guard delivered what pictures they could of what happened on the ground - if I am not mistaken, Charles, that is one of your X-Men, one of your people, murdering an entire city. Tell me I am wrong. Tell me that the creature sheathed in flames has nothing to do with you and yours.

Because if she is one of yours, I am demanding that you turn her over to my government immediately to be tried for mass murder. If you turn her over, it will tell me that you had nothing to do with this and I will ensure that you and your followers are not tried along with her.

If you do not, if you refuse, it will be considered an act of war upon my people. We will find her, Charles, and she will be brought to justice.

Whatever debt I may have once had to the X-Men is no more. The only way to fix is this the peaceful delivery of the murderer.

Do not doubt that my Imperial Guard, my armies, the entirety of India, are prepared to do what is necessary if you are not.

Lilandra Neramani


	13. Fires From The Ashes - Log 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Professor reaches out to Paige to help develop a suppressor.
> 
> _Part 2 of the[The Dark Phoenix Saga](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Dark_Phoenix_Saga)._
> 
>  
> 
> _Charles Xavier socked by Rossi;[Dr Wainsborough of M-Squad](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=M-Squad) socked by Dex_

The sudden change in Jean and the subsequent disintegration of Magneto had been a shock. The Blackbird cameras had caught some of it, including the flare of the firebird before Jean had outdistanced Rogue and Lorna easily to disappear over the horizon. The video and sensor readings had been shared to the West Coast Annex and other specialists that Xavier worked with. Included were his Cerebro readings. They showed a sudden and exponential grown in Jean's power level; a completely new phenomenon. The mansion was mourning its dead and succoring the injured, but there was no time to shutdown. They needed a strategy for Jean, and Charles had decided who would head it at the mansion.

"Paige, thank you for coming so quickly," he said to the young woman entering his office. He seemed to have aged overnight with the news of the Muir tragedy, face haggard and eyes shadowed by loss and grief. "I take it you know what has happened?"

Crossing the room, Paige shifted the tablet in her hand to under her elbow, nodding. "I spoke with Rogue for her impressions, as well as watched the footage in the DR," she replied, taking a seat in front of him and momentarily softening the sharp focus in her features. "I'm sorry... for your loss, sir."

"And I for yours." He couldn't forget that while he had lost students, staff and friends, some of them had lost family members. "But I'm afraid there is no time for grieving, not yet. There is still the matter of Jean. Her sudden power increase, what she did on Muir... she must be returned to the mansion."

Pursing her lips, Paige looked away, blinking rapidly, and then nodded. "Of course. Tell me what you need me to do."

"The power levels Jean is exhibiting are highly unstable. We need to find a way to suppress them if we're going to be able to help her. That's what I need you to do, Paige. Develop a power suppressor we can use on Jean."

"That's..." Paige paused, her mind already starting to turn. "That is going to be quite the feat." 

"Of course, I wouldn't expect you to do it all alone. I've taken the liberty of contacting the group known as M-Squad, who I recall you had some dealings with in Chicago several years ago." Charles pressed a button on the telephone on his desk, the distinctive hum of a speaker phone filling his office. "Dr. Wainsborough, thank you for waiting. Are you able to assist with our problem?"

"Thank you Professor. I've taken a look at the numbers you sent me and I'm rather confident I can help provide an approach as long as you can prove an adequate bio-physician on your end to work with." The former M-Squad leader had been collaborating with the mansion for several years now, and while irritating, in the place of Moira MacTaggart, no one had a greater knowledge of mutant suppression technology. 

Shooting a look of temporary panic at the Professor, Paige quickly managed to reply. "Oh, I'm sure we'll find you someone."

"Good. Once you do, I'll send along the suppression matrix that we've been working on. You'll need to adapt it to the specific field and then we can work on amplifying it."

Paige rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand, pushing at what was sure to be a tension headache. "Just hurry."

**Author's Note:**

> X-Project is an X-Men Movieverse/MCU RPG on Dreamwidth. It started in 2003, set right after the second X-Men movie, and from there took on a life of its own. Thirteen years later it’s become a universe all its own, and includes characters from all walks of Marvel life – no character is too small or too obscure for X-Project. We roleplay mainly through writing logs on email, as well as posts on Dreamwidth.
> 
> If you're interested, check out the below links!
> 
>   
> [Welcome to X-Project](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Welcome_To_X-Project) | [Application](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application) | [Available Characters](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Unplayed_Characters) | [Game Wiki](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page) | [Read The Game](http://xp-friends.dreamwidth.org/read) | [FAQ](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=FAQ) | [Contact Us](mailto:x_moderators@googlegroups.com) | [Follow Us on Twitter!](http://twitter.com/#!/xprojectrpg) | [Rules](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Category:Policy) | [Tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/blog/xprojectrpg) | [Application Checklist](http://x-journal.net/Wiki/index.php?title=Application_Checklist)  
> 


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